Looking For a Little Canon in D
by Kitten Kisses
Summary: FE7. Alternate Universe. College!Fic. Written for Qieru. Ongoing. Pairings: KentLyndis, GuyFlorina, HectorFarina, SainFiora. Chapter Five: “Lyndis,” he whispered, gently patting the side of her face.
1. Prologue: Just Another Monday

**Looking for a Little Canon in D****  
By: Manna

* * *

  
**

…_**xOx…**_

_**Prologue: Just Another Monday**_

The drive to school every day was serene. Kent had always been one of those people who loved quiet. Nothing was quite as wonderful as driving through the freshly fallen snow first thing in the morning with only the grey morning sky and the gentle _squish_ of snow under your tires to keep you company.

The redheaded twenty-one year old almost smiled to himself as his pickup truck's tires plowed their way through the snow that had been falling since early that morning. Most students opted to stay home on snowy days, but he wouldn't miss a class unless his very existence depended on it. Clearly, his life depended on him showing up to class on time, so he drove at a steady pace until he reached his first stop.

Stifling a yawn and pushing his glasses out of the way to rub at his eyes a little bit, Kent waited. And waited.

And waited.

Finally, a blur of energy and smiles and probably one too many cappuccinos found its way into his passenger seat. He waited until he heard the seatbelt click (because Kent _always_ followed the rules) before he put his truck in drive and pulled away from the curb.

The new addition to his '99 Tacoma was slender, not exactly tall, and could talk a mile a minute given the chance. Generally, though, she was a good listener, great company, and an even better…friend.

That's right, _friend_.

"So, Kent?" she asked, her smile hidden behind the steam of what he assumed to be her third caffeinated beverage of the morning. "How are you this morning?"

Because the thing was, Kent Morgan and Lyndis Rivièra were friends. Just friends.

**_…xOx…_**

He couldn't believe it. That stupid wench had taken his favorite parking spot…again.

Sure, the dorms were co-ed, but it didn't give her the right to snatch the spot closest to the main entrance, did it? No, of course not. He sighed and continued down the aisle before he managed to pull his S2000 into a tiny little spot nestled between the biggest Ram truck he'd ever seen—it probably belonged to Dart—and a Crown Victoria whose owner had never been taught to park properly.

With a hefty sigh, Hector von Ostia pulled himself out of his car and marched down the aisle to the front doors of the dorm. On the way, he passed that stupid rust-bucket that someone dared to call a car and kicked some snow onto it just because it was in his spot.

"Stupid wench," he mumbled as he yanked open the door to the building and stomped the snow off of his boots.

"Aww, poor Hector."

He looked up to see the wench herself. And the wench had a friend. "Hey, Wench," he said in greeting and even managed to lift his hand before a scowl made its way across his face.

"Somebody's grumpy," the wench's friend said.

"Shut up, Serra."

Serra shrugged innocently and flounced down the hall back to her room. Hector assumed that she had forgotten her lipstick, her hairclips, and her manners and had gone to retrieve them.

"Don't be such a sourpuss," the wench told him, grinning triumphantly. "Just because I got your parking spot doesn't mean anything except—"

"I don't have time to listen to you ramble." Hector von Ostia hated a lot of things. Most notably milk that had been bad for more than a week, mornings, and his own last name. But mostly just mornings.

"You know, if you would have come back on Sunday instead of today, you could have beaten me to the best parking spot there is. But," she shrugged, "you failed. That isn't my fault. And you know, this wench thing is getting a bit old. You sound like Dart."

It was Hector's turn to shrug. "Don't you have a class to get to?"

"I sure do. Psychology." She grinned brightly at him (probably because she knew it annoyed him so much). "Why are you such a grump this morning, Hector? It's a beautiful day outside."

"I had to park between Serra and Dart—neither of whom know how to park, you know. It's snowing, it's cold, and it's wet. Yes, it's a lovely day." He looked in the direction of the elevator, and sighed at the _out of order_ sign on it. "And I have to walk up three flights of stairs, get my books, and walk down three flights of stairs before going to a class I share with a certain wench I know…"

"Hey!" Serra's indignant voice floated over. "That wench has a name, you know! I don't know why you're so mean to Farina when she's always so nice to you!"

Hector occasionally had the urge to strangle Serra. He resisted.

"I'm only nice to him because it annoys him so much first thing in the morning." Farina shrugged her slim shoulders and hefted a backpack that probably weighed as much as Hector's car onto her back. "Come on, Serra. I promised Karla I'd pick her up before we headed to class."

"Yeah. Go move that scrap heap. It makes our parking lot look bad."

"Then it's a good thing you came inside, Hector," Farina called over her shoulder as she held the door open for Serra. "I wouldn't want you making our campus look bad."

Hector let out a slightly annoyed sigh and just gave up. Really, where Farina was concerned it just wasn't worth fighting. She always seemed to win. Somehow. Her and her noble carrots—_that_ was a long story—and whatever it was that she drove around in. The logos had all fallen off of it, so nobody was sure of the make or the model. It was a _thing_ with rust on it. It clanked and rattled and made all kinds of horrible sounds.

One of these days, he was certain it would go and die on her. Then, and only then, would he feel free to laugh in her face.

Not that he didn't feel free any other time, of course. But Farina Owens was someone whose personality just really set him off sometimes. It was like he couldn't help but wait for the perfect opportunity to strike. In the meantime, he would act juvenile and insult her at every opportunity because—

Wait. Since when did Hector need a reason to do anything?

It was about that moment when Hector realized something. If he didn't take off at a dead run, he would be late for class…again.

…_**xOx…**_

The sound of something rather irritating tickled her ears as she tried to sleep. She had been up until three in the morning studying for a test that she didn't have to take until noon (thank God for late classes!) and she was intending to grab every last ounce of sleep that she could before she had to get up for some last-minute studying.

With a groan and a sigh, she stared blearily at her alarm clock. A lovely red _7:56_ flashed in front of her.

She tried covering her head, tried drowning it out with the quadratic formula and the volume of a cylinder, but it wouldn't go away.

Finally, after enduring the unspeakable torture for a good ten minutes, she got up and walked over to the window. Still sleepy, it took her a few minutes to undo the latch, and when she did, she saw a familiar figure with a familiar guitar in hand sitting on the tailgate of a familiar Chevy Blazer.

_Twang._

The figure waved at her, a wide grin on his face before he began to sing along with the melody he was playing.

_Hey there, Fiora  
What's it like at Caelin Uni—_

She slammed her window shut and let the curtain fall over it.

Really, that guy was too much!

…_**xOx…**_

Guy Freeman was probably not in the right place. Well, maybe he was. Sometimes it was hard to tell. At the head of the room, though, stood…

"Sir Wallace!" The awkward 18-year-old did a sloppy salute.

"Guy!" Wallace chuckled loudly and held up a hand in greeting.

The retired military officer—nobody did know what branch of the military he served in because all he did was talk about respect and fighting and maybe a war or two and secret missions—had taken to teaching…a subject that Guy was almost positive he wasn't taking.

Scratching at the base of his braided ponytail, he stared at his schedule again. He had to tape it to his books or else he'd forget where he was going and what he was doing. "This isn't, uh, Biology…is it?"

"This is Public Speaking, boy!" The bald man laughed and paraded around at the front of the room for a few moments.

Just then, the door opened and closed again with a loud _thwack_, right behind Guy. He jumped, but didn't dare turn around.

"Get out of my classroom you rusty-brained teapot."

"How dare you try and take over my room, you viper!" Sir Wallace turned around and assumed a defensive stance.

"I'm not going to fight you for my classroom." The blonde woman, clearly annoyed, pointed at the blackboard where _Biology_ had been crossed out and replaced with _Public Speaking_. Then she picked up the nameplate on the desk that had Professor V. Sol written on it.

Her students liked to speculate that her name was Viper since that was what Sir Wallace called her whenever he managed to wander into her classroom, thinking it to be his own. Of course, there were also a few students who thought that maybe the viper and the teapot were secretly in love with one another and too stubborn to admit it.

Guy shrugged and took his seat, eventually recognizing a few of the other students who sat at the back. Guy liked a lot of people—in fact, he loved people in general. They were fun to watch. For example, Wil, a young man who sat at the front, would try to answer every question their professor asked…even if he didn't know the answer.

Lyn, one of the girls that shared a different class with him, chewed absentmindedly on her lower lip during long lectures and while taking notes, and the tiny little girl to his right liked to draw.

All the time.

She was always drawing, but Guy was just too withdrawn and embarrassed to lean over those few extra inches to see what exactly it was that she drew. It really didn't matter anyway, though. Not only was he horrible with talking to girls, she was probably way out of his league. Just like Priscilla had been. Damn that stupid Heath. Just because he could dunk a basketball didn't mean anything!

Well, Heath was nice, and he did take care of Priscilla, so…it wasn't like Guy had the right to complain. Sometimes, though, life just wasn't fair. He snapped back to attention just as Sir Wallace (placated by a donut and whatever was left of Professor Sol's coffee) stomped out of the room.

He could have sworn that the man was clanking as he walked past him, but the girl that sat to his right didn't seem to notice. She just kept on drawing.

_**…xOx…**_

Her pencil outlined the fragile feathers on the inside of a wing as her professor droned on and on about the anatomy of a pig…or was it a frog? Florina Owens wasn't paying much attention. No, the feather had to look just right…

There.

She smiled softly to herself and admired her handiwork. Okay, so the hindquarters were a little lopsided and the muscle toning on the chest didn't look quite right, but she was definitely certain that the wings were perfect. It was, she decided, how the anatomy of a pegasus should look. Or would, if they were real.

An elbow in her right side made her look up, and she saw Rebecca grinning at her. All the other girl did was incline her head slightly toward Florina's left, and the smaller girl chanced a glance in that direction.

The boy sitting next to her blushed and quickly found his notes to be absolutely fascinating.

The shy 17-year-old had a hard time containing her own blush. She had always been terribly timid around other people, especially strangers, and if one wanted to get even more specific, especially men. Maybe she had watched too much television as a child, or maybe her father's love for alcohol had made her feel that way, but she couldn't blame any one thing. Nothing stuck out in her mind that she could pin down for her discomfort around members of the opposite sex.

It wasn't as if she didn't like them—Hector was terribly handsome, after all—but she didn't know how to act around them. Even if she did know, she'd probably screw it up somehow.

At least with art, the mistake could be erased. Life, on the other hand, didn't tend to come with an eraser on the end of it. It had been rather disappointing to find that out.

At any rate, she thought as she darkened the outline around her newest creation, the young man that sat next to her was probably one of the least threatening that she had ever happened upon. At least he was quiet, had manners, and didn't accidentally brush her arm when they were both taking notes at the same time.

The reason? They were both left-handed.

Viper—she shook her head to rid her mind of Sir Wallace's nickname for their professor—Professor Sol began to give her lecture for the day—one filled with all kinds of colorful adjectives as usual—and Florina tried really hard to will away the blush that she feared was still staining her cheeks.

It wouldn't do to be distracted during the lecture, after all.

* * *

…_**xOx…**_

**Author Notes:**

This was written for Qieru, and I've got four or five more chapters of this left to go. At least. Kent's last name was stolen from Aviatrix8's western 'fic, and the rest were conjured up by Qieru and myself. The actual chapters will be longer. More will be explained. Florina's a fresh-out-of-high-school student. And smart, though she's a daydreamer. :]

Thanks for reading! Feedback is appreciated as always.


	2. Chapter One: Ninjas and Nursing Homes

**Looking For a Little Canon in D  
By: Manna

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**

…_**oXo…**_

**_Chapter One: Ninjas and Nursing Homes_**

With two hours between classes, Florina was constantly torn between studying in the lobby or student lounge of the building her next class was in, or running back to her dorm for a quick snack, a new book, or a short nap.

Usually the lounge won. After Professor Sol's bio class, most students left for either another class or to hang out at the nearby café. Being small and shy and relatively awkward around other human beings, Florina almost always chose to sit alone and study. She had a nice pile of biology work to do thanks to her last class—possibly one of the many reasons the students were convinced the woman's name was really Viper—but her work for her next class was finished.

Professor Reglay liked to insist that his students call him Pent, and he taught pretty much every history class available to take. His classes always filled up first, so it had surprised Florina to find out that she had scheduled her own classes in time to get a prime early-morning spot in his American History class.

The man's already-silvery hair didn't make him look old. No, it made him look distinguished, and even though he was leagues smarter than anyone in any of his classes, he never talked over anyone. When he gave lectures, nobody slept. Nobody drew. Nobody signed into messengers and chatted with their friends or played solitaire.

They listened.

Florina loved Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, if only because of American History.

In fact, Florina loved mornings. Her roommate did, too. Whoever set up the dorms knew what they were doing. Rebecca said hello to the sun if it bothered to show itself, and Florina liked to just watch it as it crept its way over the horizon to bathe Caelin in its gentle light.

With a lot of patience and concentration, she started studying her biology. It wasn't as if it was particularly hard, but why couldn't they be studying the anatomy of a horse instead of a frog? Well, to be fair, the young lady didn't want to dissect anything, let alone a horse. Frogs it would be, then.

Just then, a pile of books made a loud _thud_ on the table next to her, and even though she had known it was coming, she flinched.

"How are you doing this morning?" a not-quite chipper voice asked her.

Florina didn't even bother to look up. "Sir Wallace was in the wrong room again," she said.

"I'm not surprised. I passed Sain earlier and he said they had a field day over in the public speaking room." Florina's companion took a long drink of the brand-new steel mug in her hand.

"I didn't know you carried around a thermos."

"Kent was very thoughtful and packed a thermos and an insulated mug, too." Suddenly, she jerked and the books disappeared from their spot on the table. "Sorry, gotta go or I'll be late for hell. I mean Chemistry."

A greenish hurricane whirled by, and then Florina was alone. But she knew that was coming. It was routine, almost. Her dearest, oldest, and best friend Lyn had approximately four-and-a-half minutes to sit and chat with her before she had to dart off to her least-favorite class.

The reasons for Lyn hating Chemistry had never been spoken aloud, but each of her friends had their own theory. Personally, Florina thought that maybe it was because Professor Araphen seemed to hate her. If a professor hated you, well, they would make it harder on you. At least, that was how it seemed to be.

A little bored of studying the inner workings of a frog, Florina sighed quietly to herself and closed her book, her notes neatly folded to mark her place. She peered around at the others in the lounge and, noticing that they were engrossed in their own studies, pulled out her sketchbook to continue a drawing she had started working on days ago.

…_**xOx…**_

Ninjas were quiet, sneaky bastards, and they usually came in the form of brown-haired sly-smiling devils that answered to _Matthew_.

"What do you want this time, Matthew?"

"Nothing, _buddy_."

Yeah, like the "buddy" bit didn't give him away completely. "I know you want something. Now tell me what it is." Guy flipped his braid over his shoulder and readjusted his head on his arms to better ignore the presence of someone who wasn't quite his friend, nor quite his enemy.

What was Matthew? Well, nobody really knew.

"How could you think that of me?" Matthew looked stricken and clasped at his heart as a few students walked by and edged around them with curious, slightly disturbed looks on their faces.

"Easily."

"After I, kind Good Samaritan that I am, fed you when you were starving…"

"My stomach growled once, and you gave me your half-eaten Twinkie."

"Yeah, but you took it, didn't you?"

Sighing in defeat, Guy let his arms drop to his sides and ignored the fact that his forehead was red from where he had been letting it rest in an attempt to get some rest before his next class. "Okay, Matthew, what do you need?"

"Notes for that one class that I missed completely."

"Biology?" Guy dug in his folders and pulled out his notes. "You'd better give 'em back. I need to study. Professor Sol always gives us so much work."

"I'll have them copied by your last class today."

And with that, Matthew disappeared. Guy half-expected there to be a cloud of smoke or some other such ninja trick, but the brunette ambled down the hall whistling some annoyingly happy tune and vanished around the corner.

Just then, he thought to check his watch. "O-oh crap!" he almost shouted in the quiet student lounge. A few young men and women thought to look up at him with expressions that were clearly not amused—he had interrupted their studying or sleeping, after all—but he tried to pretend they didn't exist. He had World Religion with Professor Renault—nobody knew if that was the man's first or last name, yet—in less than ten minutes, and the classroom was, uh…

He checked his schedule…

Yeah, it was halfway across the building and up two flights of stairs!

He hurriedly grabbed his bag and shoved through the people around him. Just as he came to the door, he happened to see a familiar figure, her lavender hair spilling over her shoulders as she concentrated on the strokes her pencil made across the paper. He came to a screeching halt for reasons he didn't even understand and chanced a quick peek at what she was working so diligently on.

She paused and looked up and over her shoulder at him, her expression nothing short of completely shaken. He had probably pulled her out of a wonderful place, he thought as he looked down at the outline of clouds and skies and a young woman on the back of a proud horse with wings. "T-that's pretty cool!" he stammered and took off before he could make himself look like an even bigger idiot.

He only wanted to see what she was drawing. He hadn't intended to startle her or stammer like he had never seen a girl before. Damn it all!

It was at that moment when he saw the unmistakable bright red hair of Priscilla. She looked more beautiful every single day, but he couldn't stop. Not now. He'd be late to class and he wasn't about to stammer in front of her, too. Once a day was just about all he could handle, thank-you-very-much!

When she turned and smiled at him with a, "Hey, Guy," all he could do was run a little faster. Especially when he noticed who had her hand clasped tightly in his.

…_**xOx…**_

Sain was not a ninja. He was more like a samurai, at least, that's what Kent told him. When Sain and Kent had been younger, they had played a lot of children's games, but Sain always made a terrible ninja, and this always bothered Kent a lot. People should do jobs they're good at, not jobs they're horrible at.

Sain had always known that his friend was a bit odd, a bit too uptight, and…well, made a better ninja than he did. Of course, Kent was usually rather quiet, so that might have had something to do with it, and if Sain could shut his mouth for five minutes straight he might have qualified as a decent-enough ninja in Kent's books.

That never happened, of course.

And the year Sain had gotten a beautiful polished drool-worthy guitar had been the year that Sain had truly decided to never walk the path of a ninja. He couldn't stop singing for what felt like…well, he just never stopped.

It seemed that way, anyway.

Delilah was the name of his guitar, and he carried her around with him everywhere. Hector—always trying to irritate other people—liked to say it was because he couldn't get a real woman, but everyone knew the truth. Sain just liked women, period. He liked them so much that in high school he never could decide who to ask to prom, and he ended up not going, pouting in the corner of the stockroom where Kent worked.

Because Kent thought dances were a waste of time and he hadn't gone, either.

At any rate, Sain liked to think that he had matured a bit since his evening of pouting over his lack of a prom date, and he and Delilah were absolutely inseparable, even during his college classes. The light brown-haired twenty-two-year-old didn't sing in class unless asked to, but he had picked up a rather strange habit…

Oh! There she was. With a bright grin on his face and Delilah tucked in his arms, Sain leapt from the tailgate of his Blazer and greeted the lovely Miss Owens.

Fiora Owens, a tall girl—though not as tall as he—with hair that brushed her shoulder blades and eyes that sparkled with a fierce determination, had caught his eye immediately upon her entrance to Caelin University. What he didn't know was that the fierce determination he saw in her eyes was a fierce determination to avoid him, his singing, and his overly brilliant smile first thing in the morning every morning.

"Miss Owens!" he practically shouted, bounding up to her. "Would you like a ride to your distinguished Women In Art class?"

"Stop calling me that," she mumbled, still under the effect of what might be considered someone-woke-me-up-too-early syndrome.

"Okay, then, Fiora," he grinned. "What say you to a pleasant drive in the freshly fallen snow?"

She looked down at the ground, and his eyes followed hers. There were thousands of soggy, muddy, oil-soaked footprints all over the campus.

"Never mind," she told him, tying her hair behind her head with a ponytail holder. "I don't want people to think we're on a first name basis, Mr. Harrison."

Sain looked crestfallen for about four seconds before he went and held open the passenger door to his SUV. Fiora walked right past him.

"But, but…" He started to strum a little melody on his trusty Delilah.

"I'm walking!" she called over her shoulder.

"I'm in the same class. Wouldn't it be more efficient if we rode to class together?"

"I'm walking."

With a glance at his vehicle and then at Fiora's retreating figure, Sain made a quick decision. He grabbed his books, slammed the door shut, shoved the tailgate back up and the back window down, and took off until he finally caught up with Fiora.

Cheerfully, he said, "I guess I'll walk, too, then."

Fiora's grunted reply was as good as an acknowledgment that his presence was acceptable, and he grinned as trotted along next to her.

…_**xOx…**_

Farina Owens slipped into her regular seat in the next-to-last row of Professor Athos's Psychology class four minutes ahead of time. It wasn't a new record for her, unfortunately, but fortunately it allowed her the chance to see Hector von Ostia burst into the room twelve seconds before Professor Athos locked the door.

"Cutting it awfully close, aren't you?" she teased as she snapped open her laptop and leaned back in her seat with her arms behind her head.

"Shut up," he hissed and took his jacket off.

"I see the Caelin Crusader's quarterback is sweating like a pig." She sniffed and turned her nose up just to spite him. It would remind him of Serra and annoy him more than usual.

He grunted and made a lot of noise putting his books and notes on the desk in front of him.

As Professor Athos droned on and on about…whatever it was he was talking about, Farina opted to play games on her laptop instead. The school's wireless internet was pretty shaky, so she couldn't grind levels in a massive multi-player online game, but she could play something else. Spider Solitaire was a good option, seeing as how it was, er…free. And did not require wireless capabilities.

Not even twenty minutes into her game…

"Put the five on the…"

She shoved her elbow out and jabbed Hector in the side before turning her screen so that he couldn't see it.

"Put the five on the—"

She slammed the laptop closed.

Dart, Dan…whatever the guy's name was. Really, he had an identity crisis of sorts. Or maybe he just thought that by going by Dart, people would think he was cool. The guy seriously thought that he owned a treasure map.

Farina wondered if it wasn't some stupid map he had drawn himself as a child and forgotten about.

At any rate, she wasn't taking advice from some stupid jock. Either stupid jock, come to think of it. Both young men were out of their minds and _why oh why_ did she sit between them in class?

She wondered if maybe it was God trying to tell her that He hated her. Or maybe she had just been stupid to sit next to Hector—when she had known he was an idiot by the way he looked. Because Dart had taken a seat next to her, inadvertently creating a Farina Sandwich. Or maybe it was completely intentional. Hmm… In any case, she didn't want to know if it was. Farina liked sandwiches, but she liked turkey or ham.

She had her laptop packed away long before the class even ended, and as soon as the last word fell from Professor Athos's lips about the Big Test scheduled to take place the following week, she was out the door and halfway down the hall.

Hector had, after all, sweated through his clothes, and she couldn't take it any longer. She needed air, and badly.

At least, that was what she told herself.

…_**xOx…**_

Lyn was tired. Mondays were her longest days, with classes that ran until almost six o'clock in the evening. Chemistry had been—as she had so kindly told Florina it would be—hell, and things hadn't gotten much better afterward.

She hated it when one stupid class could make the rest of her day turn sour. And, she half-thought as she stumbled out of a particularly grueling Classical Literature class with Professor Ursula Benning, she hated that Kent always, _always_ waited around for her to get out of her last class. It wasn't that she didn't appreciate it... It just, it made her feel guilty, sometimes.

It never failed. She couldn't quite recall when it all started, but somewhere along the line he had not only started driving her to class in the morning, but home from classes, too.

Of course, on the days where her classes finished before his (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) she waited for him, but…for a free ride home, why wouldn't she?

Plus, he was good, sensible, intelligent company. That could be hard to find in modern society, as she had quickly realized.

She watched him as he sat in one of the chairs of the student lounge of Lycia Hall. His glasses were on, again, and the end of his pen was in his mouth. He wasn't chewing on it or anything…it was just there. Resting on his lower lip.

She smiled slightly and snuck up behind him, pulling it out of his mouth. "Deep in thought, I see," she teased, holding his pen out for him to take back.

He blinked a few times, and shook his head slightly as if getting over being startled, and then he closed his book, closed his notebook with his carefully written notes, and shoved them into his bag.

"Are you ready?" he asked quietly. Kent had always been the courteous type, and while most students wouldn't hesitate to speak at a normal volume, he knew that the others in the lounge were studying intently before their next class, and he did his best not to disturb them.

"Yes," she answered back, just as quietly. "You don't have to wait around for me, you know."

He shrugged a little, but it might have been her imagination. His bag was over his shoulder, his keys in his hand.

After a short walk in the snow across the parking lot, they reached his truck. He unlocked her door before walking around to unlock his own. It was almost completely dark outside, but as they pulled their seatbelts on, she leaned over slightly and smiled at him. "Kent," she said sweetly. "If it's not too much trouble, could you drop me off at…?"

"Of course," he said before she could even finish her sentence.

"You don't have to wait for me," she told him, though she knew what his response would be. Despite already knowing, though, she felt that she had to at least give him the opportunity to leave her there. "I can walk back."

"I'll wait."

She smiled, "Thank you."

…_**xOx…**_

Kent waited very patiently in the lobby of Heartland, Caelin's nursing home. This, much like everything else in his life, had become routine. He opened his books and continued to work on studying his various subjects while he waited for his friend to finish.

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday they came, and every time he sat in the lobby while she went in to visit her grandfather. Kent had known the man for a long time, but they had never been close. And at any rate, he didn't feel that he should intrude on Lyndis's time with her only remaining relative.

He had specifically told her to take as much time as she needed.

After all, the old man's health had been very up-and-down since his admission to Heartland. Kent tended to worry about him a little more than was normal for someone that didn't even know him all that well. Perhaps he worried so much because Lyndis seemed so close to him despite having only met him a year ago. And as of late, whenever her mood changed, it seemed to affect his, too.

Awfully strange for two people who were _just friends_.

Well, nobody had ever said they were "just friends". But that word was used a lot in the real world, and since it wasn't as if he had ever tried…anything with Lyndis, it was safe to assume that they were friends and nothing more.

But they were very good friends. At least, he liked to think so.

She'd pretty much won him over right from the get-go, and it wasn't just anybody that could do that. Actually, Sain was his only other really good friend, and Wil liked to follow him around a lot to get advice—Kent still didn't know why that was—but Lyndis seemed to understand him without him actually having to say much.

And he liked that. They worked well together despite the fact that they were so different, sometimes. Her and her cappuccino and he and his plain, black coffee.

But they always agreed on the doughnuts.

Boston Cream.

Almost two hours later, he had managed to get a lot of his homework done, and even some studying for a test that wasn't going to take place until Friday. Just as he put his books and his favorite pen away, Lyndis walked out into the lobby, a smile on her face that wobbled ever so slightly.

"Lyndis?" he asked softly, standing as she walked right past him towards the exit. Suddenly concerned, he trailed after her, unsure of what to say or do. He hadn't really seen her looking…quite like that before.

Something had to have happened, right? But…but what?

She waited by the passenger door of his maroon truck for him to unlock her door, but when he turned the key and opened the door for her, she just stood there for a long moment before turning to face him.

He was taken aback by what he saw.

She was crying.

"L-Lyndis?" He shuffled a little closer, and then back. Uncertainty hung in the air before he managed, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she squeaked out, her crooked smile appearing straighter after some effort. "H-He's doing so much better." Just then, her smile blossomed into a grin, but the tears fell even faster. "He even walked a few steps on his own today. They said maybe he could come home soon."

Kent was left speechless. _Absolutely speechless_.

Even when she closed the small gap between them and wrapped her arms around him, he couldn't think of anything to say. He could only let his coat soak up her tears, and his gentle returning squeeze speak the words he couldn't quite come up with.

It was a very special girl he held in his arms, he knew.

And somehow, he had known that the moment he had first seen her…

* * *

…_**xOx…**_

**Author Notes:**

I swear this is going somewhere. The main focus of this story is Kent/Lyndis, and the others are there because I put them there and I think they're interesting. Yes. I hope this chapter was enjoyable. Thanks for reading and leave feedback if you have time!

Edit on 3/1/09: Sain's last name was changed to "Harrison".


	3. Chapter Two: Turning Points

**Looking For a Little Canon in D  
By: Manna

* * *

  
**

**…_xOx…_**

**Chapter Two: Turning Points**

Everyone's life had what most people called a turning point. Kent couldn't really say that he was an exception to the general rule, either, because when Lyndis had walked into his life, things had definitely changed.

It had been the winter quarter of his sophomore year at Caelin University. The sky had been grey, overcast. It was December. Sain had been rambling for days about how much he wanted snow, and oh, was Christmas over already? All of those details were utterly unimportant, though. It was the first day back after two weeks off, and Kent was headed to a chemistry class taught by Professor Araphen. He really wasn't interested in sciences—they weren't his strong point…well, not many things were—but it was a required class, and he was there early, as was his custom.

Sain always chastised him for always getting to class twenty or even thirty minutes ahead of time. "But Kent," he'd say, "that's twenty or thirty more minutes that you could be sleeping in!"

Kent had considered Sain's words… After all, he found himself studying in all his spare moments, which were few considering he double and sometimes triple-checked all his own work. Not to mention the part-time jobs he picked up whenever he felt he could manage them along with everything else in his life.

Looking back, he couldn't be more grateful that he hadn't listened to Sain.

He had twenty minutes of spare time before class began, so he headed for the chemistry lab, bag stuffed neatly with school-related necessities. To get there, he had to pass through the lobby at the entrance of the building. The spacious room was empty, save for one other person.

His feet refused to keep moving as he blinked at the girl standing in the middle of the floor, a piece of paper in her hands, her eyes studying it intently. She wasn't very tall, and she was rather thin for her height. He noticed that she looked endlessly tired and when she looked up at the sound of his boots against the marble floor, he knew that she was lost, though not necessarily in only the physical sense of the word.

"Hi," she said by way of greeting, shifting the shoulder strap of her bookbag as she looked down at the paper and then up at him. "Do you know where…room 327 is?"

He nodded in return before speaking quietly, "What class?"

Her eyes went back to the paper, "Algebra something-or-other with Professor Marcus Byne." She smiled at him a little and cocked her head to the side, looking hopeful.

"It's this way," he said, glad that it wasn't in a different building altogether, though he doubted he could refuse to help her even if it was.

She hurried to catch up to him, "My name is Lyndis, by the way." She stopped, shook her head, and bit her lip as she matched his pace.

"Kent." He hadn't known what else to say except his name, but it managed to get a bigger smile out of her.

"Nice to meet you." After another moment of silence, she was talking again, "I just moved here from Sacae…you might not have heard of it. It's pretty far from here."

He let the name of her hometown roll through his thoughts. "I've heard of Sacae," he finally answered.

"I loved it there." Her words hung in the air for a long time before she sighed wistfully. "But this place isn't too bad. It's just…different." She almost plowed into him when he came to a sudden stop in front of a classroom. "Say, Kent?"

He raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"Do you think that my accent will make me stick out too much?"

He really had no idea why she was talking to him. It didn't bother him, but it was strange. The only people who bothered to ramble at him were Sain and sometimes a select other few. Girls seemed afraid to talk to him, sometimes—which was probably a good thing, as far as he was concerned. Sain was into women enough for the two of them.

The smile on her face wobbled a little when it took him too long to answer. "They probably won't even notice it," he said, but he was lying. It was a definite accent, not too thick but very much there. It was kind of cute, actually, but he would never tell her that. He almost blushed just thinking it.

She beamed at him, relief apparent on her face. "Thanks for helping me out. I owe you one." She patted his arm and in a flurry of movement, disappeared into the classroom, leaving him with only the memory of her.

For the first time in his life, he hardly heard a lecture. It was a good thing that on the first day of the new quarter, nothing of importance was discussed, because his thoughts were filled with something—or rather, someone—else entirely. He tried to shove her out of his head, but she had left quite an impression on him.

She talked different, she acted different…she even dressed different!

When class ended, he scolded himself for not paying enough attention and tried to get his mind into gear for the next class. He couldn't afford to space off all day, after all. But luck was not with him—later he would decide that it actually had been—because after he packed his things away, the first thing he saw when he stepped out into the hall was _her._

She was leaning against the wall, bookbag over her shoulder (her coat stuffed inside), books held up against her chest, one foot resting on the wall behind her. She looked up at him and smiled as he made his way toward her. He didn't know why he was doing so except that she was there, and she looked as if she might be…waiting for him…maybe.

She pushed herself off of the wall and her smile turned sheepish. "Hello again," she said softly.

The corners of his mouth tugged upward slightly, "Hello, Lyndis."

She blushed a little, "I don't know why I introduced myself that way. You can just call me Lyn if you want to."

But he had already decided that he liked the sound of Lyndis. It was a pretty name, and it seemed to fit her just fine. He nodded anyway, though, and stepped out of the way as a flood of students, released from another class down the hall, made their way past him. When he was right next to her, he suddenly noticed something, and he started, eyes wide, "Your hair!" It had been tucked into her coat before, but now, it spilled over her back in plain view.

She hugged her books to her tighter and looked embarrassed. "I knew it would make me stick out, but…I wasn't sure if I wanted to cut it or—"

"No!" He flushed deeply in embarrassment for his outburst before regaining his composure. "No, don't cut it. It looks nice." He certainly wasn't lying about that. She had beautiful, long, straight hair that hung a few inches below her waist. She could probably sit on it if she wanted.

She giggled a little and attached herself to his side. "Thanks," she said, and pulled out her rumpled piece of paper. "Any chance you could point me in the right direction of English 101? The professor is Sonia Reed."

It hadn't taken long for them to become good friends—which Sain teased him for _months_ about before finally giving up—and shortly after that, she had wrestled—with relative ease—his address and phone number from him. As luck would have it, they lived only a minute or two apart, and the next thing he knew, he was offering her the passenger seat of his Tacoma. "We are the only commuters on this side of town," he said, and by that he meant much, much more, though his words were in no way untrue.

Most of the others had chosen to live on campus rather than drive from home. Maybe they thought it was a learning experience to live on their own, but Kent couldn't imagine sharing a small dorm room with anyone, even—especially—Sain. It was cheaper to commute, anyway, and considering he would have to pay back his loans, someday…it would be better for him to continue living with his father while he went to school.

Slowly, bits and pieces of Lyn's story had leaked out, from her own lips, usually on the drive home from classes. She lived with her grandfather, she really missed Sacae, she was 19, and he couldn't forget her voice over the phone the night after Christmas that year.

He rarely answered his phone—he hardly knew what to say in person, but with nothing between them, no facial expressions or eyes to read, it left him feeling even more idiotic and speechless. But, at 12:28am, the wee hours of the morning on December 26th, he had answered his cell phone's simple ring when he noticed that it was Lyndis calling.

"Kent?" she asked.

Her voice worried him, and he fumbled for the switch on the lamp as he sat up, reaching for his glasses on the nightstand. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Silence greeted him.

Finally, "Lyndis? Are you okay?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to wake you up."

He knew she was about to hang the phone up, but before she could, he hurriedly spoke, "I'll be right there."

And he was, sweatpants, warm shirt, and a jacket. His truck's heater hadn't even kicked in when he pulled up to the curb outside of her grandfather's house. She met him at the car, climbed inside, shivering in her pajamas. She didn't even have a coat on.

He gave her his before turning the heat up.

"I never told you why I moved here," she said, and he could barely hear her voice over the sound of his vehicle's heater. "After graduating high school, I started working, and…and I decided to enter college in the winter instead of the fall, so I could save up some extra money, first."

He nodded, prompting her to continue as he turned the heat down a little, adjusting the vents so that they blew on Lyndis.

She reached out to the heat, looking terribly vulnerable in his coat—it was way too big for her. "My parents decided to go out Christmas night…there was a party, and I had to work so I didn't go. They didn't drink much—Father hardly ever drank!—but…on the way home they took an exit ramp and the curve was set for…for 25 miles an hour."

Tears were already falling, but he didn't really know what he should do. He hadn't been faced with a crying woman in…in years! Since his _mother_—

"They were obeying the speed limit—they did all kinds of investigating on it so _I know_—but a tractor-trailer was coming toward them going the wrong way, and…and…" She folded forward, into herself. "It's only been a year but it _feels like_…"

Tentatively, he reached out and touched her arm. The next thing he had known, she was leaning over the console between their seats, her knee in the cup holder, her other knee pressing against his seat belt release button. He had wrapped his arms around her, not knowing what else to do, or what to say. He had lost his mother years before—back in high school, actually—but what would he have done if he had lost both parents?

No wonder she had looked so lost and tired that first day he had seen her, he remembered thinking. The death of her parents had still been fresh in her mind.

Lyndis was a mostly silent crier, he realized, and after a few minutes had passed, she shifted against him slightly and hiccupped, laughing nervously afterward before whispering, "I'm sorry."

"There's nothing to apologize for." His words came fast, quick, but also soft, and he ran his fingers through her hair a little bit; she was wearing it down…he decided that he liked it that way.

She pulled away, and reluctantly, he let her go. She all but fell back into the passenger seat again, "Yeah," she said, "I just woke you up after midnight, dragged you all the way out—"

"You didn't drag me anywhere," he found himself saying. "I wanted to come."

For a long time, the only thing either of them could hear was the sound of the heater's fans blowing. Kent flushed in embarrassment, wondering if he had said too much. He had a habit of saying too little or too much; someday, he hoped he would find a comfortable medium.

Finally, she smiled at him and shrugged out of his coat with a, "Thank you for everything, Kent."

He took his coat back as she opened the passenger door and slid out into the snow. He realized that her feet were bare.

"Lyndis?" he asked hesitantly before she could close the door.

She peered back inside, the wind blowing through her thin pajama shirt, making her shiver almost uncontrollably. "What?"

"You don't have to…hesitate to call me," he said slowly, forcing the words out of his mouth as he fought back a flush of embarrassment. Maybe it was too much, saying it…but he didn't want her to feel as if she wasn't welcome to ring him… "Anytime," he added on, a moment later.

She smiled, suppressing the sound of her chattering teeth, "I really appreciate it," she whispered, and then she was gone, safe inside her grandfather's house.

It would be fifteen minutes before he would put the truck in drive to pull away from the curb. He had a feeling…a really strange, almost…surreal feeling, that what had just happened had done…something.

It had taken her almost a year to confide in him with that information. It was clearly something she loathed speaking about because it brought back too many memories. She probably hadn't told anyone else… His heart thudded irregularly in his chest as he pulled away from the curb. Had her confiding in him with such information meant anything?

…_**xOx…**_

Lyn laughed and squeezed Kent so tight that she wondered if he could breathe before she let him go, only bothering to wipe her eyes on the sleeve of her jacket afterward. She watched him shuffle his feet awkwardly before he spoke, "That's wonderful news, Lyndis."

She nodded heartily, her head already hurting from crying. "So maybe in a couple of weeks he'll be back home…" She sighed happily as she climbed up into the passenger seat of his truck and let him shut her door for her. As he got in beside her and turned the key in the ignition, she leaned over and squeezed his arm, resting her head against his shoulder for a few seconds before she settled back into her seat. "They said I'd have to make the house handicap accessible, but I'm sure that wouldn't be too hard…some handrails in the bathroom, especially in the shower…"

"I'll help," he offered, and Lyn's heart swelled up in what could only be described as joy.

The drive home wasn't very long, and Lyndis was brimming with excitement at the thought of having her grandfather home with her again after several months of being without him. When Kent pulled up to the curb of the house she was currently living in alone, though, her mood seemed to deflate, slightly. "I have so much work to do," she moaned, picking up her bag from the floor before settling it in her lap. "And I'll be all alone all night…" She smirked and tossed him a wink, though she couldn't be sure that he had seen it in the dark. "Want to come in? We could make dinner and do homework."

He seemed to weigh the pros and cons—as he often did—before he put the truck in park and turned his key, pulling it out. "Okay," he said, getting out before opening the small door to the backseat to get his backpack. "What do you want to eat?"

Lyndis fumbled for the key to the house as they walked up the porch steps. "I don't know. But if all else fails, there's always _Spaghetti O's_ and…sandwiches of some kind." She glanced sideways at him while she unlocked the door, knowing what his response would be.

"I'll make grilled cheese."

"Okay." They took off their coats and settled them onto the coat rack by the door before taking off their shoes. Lyn lead the way to the kitchen and immediately went to the pantry to find a couple cans of _Spaghetti O's_. Even if he hadn't exactly admitted it, she knew he liked them.

When she emerged, he was already buttering bread to put on the griddle. "Two cans?" he sounded amused. "Isn't that a bit much?"

"No way," she replied, talking loudly over the can opener. "You eat one _by yourself_. If we don't eat it all, I can just save it and eat it for breakfast." She shrugged and dumped both cans in a saucepan, grabbing a rubber-scraper out of a drawer to get every last little bit out. On her way to find a spoon to stir it with, she flicked the burner on low and stopped next to him as he passed his hands over the griddle to see if it was hot enough. "You make really good grilled cheese," she said matter-of-factly, grinning before continuing across the large kitchen.

He smiled a little, "Thank you."

Dinner was simple, but Lyndis was excessively happy. Usually, she came home alone, made dinner alone, ate alone, and did her homework alone. But here she was, eating with Kent. They had even _made_ dinner together—well, he had made most of it, but still. It was so nice to have company—especially Kent's, though she still wasn't quite sure why that was, yet.

They settled back, stomachs full, and worked on homework in companionable silence. Kent finished first, having had more time to work on his during the day, and excused himself to use the bathroom while Lyn dutifully plowed through her chemistry. Really, if she just _passed_ the stupid class, she'd be happy. Exams were too close for comfort as it was.

"You can stay the night if you want," she offered when he came back, knowing he wouldn't take it wrong after the first…and second…and, well, _third_ misunderstanding they'd had due to her asking that question. In reality, she didn't like being alone to begin with, but the only thing worse than that was living alone. Sometimes it almost scared her to know that someone could break into her house and it would be only her there…no one else.

She didn't want to come across as some kind of little kid, though, so she never gave any reasoning except that it was late and he looked tired and he could sleep in the spare bedroom across the hall.

He shook his head and sighed a little as he picked his glasses up from the table and put them on, brushing his bangs out of his eyes. "I should get home. My father's probably worried."

She tensed up at his words, but merely nodded in agreement. "Be careful," she said. "I'll see you in the morning?"

"Every morning," he answered, making her grin and look up at him, her pencil tapping delicately against the kitchen table.

"Not every morning," she teased.

He chuckled a little, "I won't risk my life waking you up early on the weekend."

"I wouldn't kill you," she insisted. "I'd only take you prisoner."

He raised an eyebrow and blinked, shaking his head after a moment before hefting his backpack off of one of the extra chairs. "Good night, Lyndis."

"Good night, Kent."

After he was gone, she flushed in embarrassment and sighed, letting her forehead rest against the cool wood of the table. _Prisoner,_ she thought. _Why did I say that?_ It almost sounded dirty or something. Either way, she grinned to herself, she could take that a step further someday and _make _it a dirty comment. She could only imagine the reaction she would get!

A couple of minutes passed and she heard his truck pull away from the curb; a few minutes after that, and she knew he was parking outside of his father's garage.

His father…

She knew the man wouldn't be worried about him, so she couldn't help but wonder what had prompted Kent to say such a thing. The man most likely had an entire case of beer in his system, anyway. He probably didn't even know that his son wasn't there until he came home.

Kent tried to shrug it off as being unimportant, but he showed her in subtle ways that it bothered him more than he wanted anyone to know. The first clue had been that he wouldn't let her inside his house. Or even up to the door. Or out of the _truck_ for even a _second._

Even though her curiosity was brought about by the entire thing, she had told herself from the beginning that he would tell her if he wanted to. So far he hadn't; she was a little disappointed by that fact.

Taking a drink of the glass of water in front of her—Kent's influence, certainly—she sighed for the millionth time that day and thought about her grandfather. He would be coming home soon! Somehow, thinking of working on making the house handicap accessible with Kent for her beloved grandfather made the chore of chemistry homework much more bearable.

…_**xOx…**_

Tuesdays were not any better than Mondays, in Hector's book. Hell, the stupid day of the week was probably the _worst_, considering that Monday gave you the weekend's sleep to fall back on. But what did it matter, really? Any day where a human being had to get up before noon was a day he didn't think should exist.

Either way, he found himself in some kind of math class…Geometry, maybe. Either way, he knew it would suck; he only realized how much it would suck when he saw Farina's cheerful grin as she sat down next to him with a flourish.

"Hello von Ostia!" she said in a singsong voice. "My, what a lovely day today!"

He didn't even respond. Someone had told him long ago that if you ignored annoying things, they went away.

"I just _love_ Tuesdays! Did you know that we're already on the second day of the week? Well, technically the third since Sunday is the first day in a calendar week…"

Whoever had said that to him had been a damn liar!

"Farina!" he snapped, raising his head up to glare at her. "Do the world a favor and close that gaping maw of yours!"

One carefully plucked eyebrow found its way to a higher position on her face before she grinned coyly and winked at him. "I'd like to see you try and make me," she said.

Serra giggled from his other side, making him nearly jump into the air in terror. "It's a conspiracy!" he almost shouted. It was a good thing class hadn't started yet, but he got a few dirty looks from some of the other students, and laughs from the others.

"That's my line," the blue-haired wench said, shaking her head. "Since I have every blasted class with—of all people in the universe—you!" She settled back into her chair and opened up a notebook before scribbling the date on it in her illegible chicken scratch. "Luckily for me," she continued, resting her pencil behind her ear, "I quickly learned how to leash you."

"Are you crazy?" He sat up and pointed a finger at her. "You, leash me? Hah! Don't make me laugh." Leaning forward, he brought his fist down on the tabletop in front of the feisty girl sitting next to him and ignored the way Serra was grinning. "You _might_ make some unfortunate soul a nice wife someday if you'd _just shut up_!"

"Ah, speechless I see. A fine quality in a wife," Nino, a child prodigy quoted from the _front row_. "That was a _great_ movie! But wow, that guy was such a jerk!" She blinked cutely at Hector and he was about to throw his hands up into the air when the professor arrived.

"You're lucky," he whispered heatedly at Farina. "Ol' Kenneth just saved your life."

She wrinkled her nose in disgust and held up a finger. "Isn't it rude to address your professors by their first name?"

_Dammit_, he thought. Well, one of these days, when Farina's rustbucket left her stranded in the middle of nowhere, he would get even. Because _then_, she would have to call him to get her. He already had it all imagined, too. The look on her face would be _priceless_, to say the least.

What he failed to realize, however, was that she could call Serra, Fiora, or even her other sister, the tiny shy squeaky one, to come and get her.

…_**xOx…**_

Fiora Owens walked out of her first class of the day and suppressed a yawn. At least she would have time to get some caff—she paused, as she always did, when she saw Mr. Harrison leaning against the wall with a grin stretched across his face and a can of Coca Cola in his hand, still cold.

He was always there. Well, if one day he wasn't, she would probably worry about him—just a…little bit, of course. She took the can from him and led the way to the student lounge, Sain following right behind her. If he had a tail, she thought wryly, he'd be wagging it.

"Good mornin'," he drawled in that _slight_ southern accent he had.

"Good morning, Mr. Harrison." She opened her notebook and immediately began to work on her assigned papers.

"You can call me Sain," he said.

"I'll call you Mr. Harrison." She peered at him from over her thin-framed glasses and raised an eyebrow. "And if you play one note on that guitar—"

"Strum," he said. "Strum, not play. One strums the strings of a guitar to create beautiful musi—"

"You can also pluck at the strings, but fine."

"No, one plucks at a harp."

A moment passed where there was nothing but complete silence between them, and she began writing the rough draft for a _really interesting_ essay about women's history that she hoped would turn out to be one of the best in the class.

And then, suddenly, a soft guitar note.

She ignored it.

Another guitar note.

She ignored that, too. Could Saint Elimine be any more interesting? Seriously!

Another guitar note, and then more…and before she knew it…

"_Some guys have all the luck…_"

She tried to ignore it, but when she looked up, Mr. Harrison was looking at her, attempting to make his expression, "crestfallen".

"_Some guys have all the pain… Some guys get all the breaks… Some guys do nothin' but complain…_"

She glared at him, but he only grinned and continued to sing, quietly.

"_If you were here with me, I'd feel so happy I could cry… You are so dear to me, I just can't let you say goodbye._"

The other students in the lounge clapped enthusiastically and he turned and waved at them, grinning wider.

Fiora sighed. "What did I say?" she finally whispered.

"Yeah, yeah. Can't you appreciate the arts? I would have thought that a woman as beautiful as yourself would, but…"

"Not while I'm trying to write an essay, I can't," she interjected before he could ramble on for an hour—she'd had that happen to her, once. "Besides, nobody can take you seriously."

"What do you mean?" He looked taken aback. "Why, Fi—I mean, Miss Owens—I happen to _know_ that I'm a decent enough guitar player."

"You mean strummer?"

Sain paused, speechless for a moment until the mother of all grins broke out across his face.

Well, Fiora thought, closing her notebook. She'd certainly get nothing done before her next class. That was what she deserved for trying to be humorous, though. He was already babbling a mile a minute about going out to lunch or dinner or something.

…_**xOx…**_

It had been a long day for Guy. First of all, his name was Guy, and that in itself gave him all kinds of problems. Every single time he heard someone say, "Hey guys!" he would turn around to see what they wanted. Nobody ever wanted anything, so why did he even bother? He asked himself that every day.

After getting lost four times, twice while trying to find the bathroom, not to mention the near-tumble headfirst down the stairs, he was ready to call it a day.

He walked out of his last class one package of _M&Ms_ short, though he hadn't quite realized it yet. Well, at least he still had his wallet.

On his way to his dorm room, though—hell, he couldn't _afford_ a car to drive around campus when the entire place was perfectly accessible by foot—he noticed Florina, bundled up tight in a thick blue coat with a cute crocheted scarf around her neck. O-okay, so people might question him for thinking the thing was _cute_, but it was! It was all kinds of pretty pastel colors. Blue, and green, and pink, and lavender…oh, the same color as her hair.

He was so busy staring that he almost ran into her. Luckily, before his day could get even worse, he stopped and blinked as she turned around and did the same.

Two people. Blinking at each other.

Flushes spread across their faces at the same time.

"U-uhm, hi," he mumbled.

"H-Hello," she answered shyly, tugging self-consciously on her scarf.

Then he was walking, walking…across the parking lot to his dorm. He grinned. He had _spoken_ to her and she had _responded_! Sure, she was shy, but so was he, so he could understand her, right?

_Wow,_ he marveled as he bounced up the stairs to his third-floor room that he shared with a really nice outgoing boy named Wil. _Maybe Priscilla was out of my league, anyway._

But Florina—shy and _definitely_ cute and interesting—might…well, maybe _eventually_ they could actually hold a conversation. Maybe. He blushed in embarrassment. "I'm being silly," he scolded himself.

"Guy, are you talking to yourself again?" Wil peered around the corner from his spot in front of his Nintendo Wii. He was currently trying to play tennis and was utterly failing.

"Yeah," he said, a grin spreading across his face that made Wil shake his head in confusion. He fell onto his bed with a sigh, still smiling, letting himself hear the sound of her voice for a few moments before he sat up and tried to put his game face on. It was time to do homework.

If Wil wondered why his roommate was still grinning like a fool four hours later while he was doing algebra equations, he didn't ask. Guy wouldn't know how to explain it, anyway.

* * *

…_**xOx…**_

**Author Notes:**

Whew. That took a long time to write, I'll tell you that much. Is this actually going anywhere? I'm not sure. (No, of course it is!) I'll try to finish it up within five more chapters…I hope. I have so many ideas in my head for chaptered 'fics for the _Fire Emblem_ section, but I want to finish this one first.

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, please ask and I'll try to answer them.

Bonus points if you know what Nino's quote was from offhand. The song Sain sang was, "_Some Guys Have All the Luck_" by Rod Stewart.


	4. Chapter Three: Midnight Movie

**Looking For a Little Canon in D  
By: Manna

* * *

  
**

…_**xOx…**_

**Chapter Three: Midnight Movie**

"We are the _worst_ arena team _ever_!" A pause, and then, "Well, you are better at it than Wii Tennis. Don't ever play that again. Now let's get back in there and kick someone's sorry can!"

Those words brought Florina to consciousness early Saturday morning. Life, with the exception of Lyn's grandfather's improvements and the fact that she had managed to speak to a _boy_ without fainting, had not been very eventful.

Blearily, she rubbed at her eyes and stumbled out of bed. Rebecca was on her computer, fingers clicking away at her keyboard as she moved her mouse around frantically.

"I can't believe you just let that priest—!"

Typical for a weekend. Rebecca and Wil always liked to drain away the college's internet connection on games. Her roommate had tried to get her sucked into the game, too, but her pretty blue-skinned character had gotten killed by a hideous-looking moth five seconds into the game, and she had almost cried in embarrassment.

No, she would stick to drawing. She was better at it.

"Mornin', Florina," Rebecca said, moving the mouthpiece of her headset away from her face. "Could you do me a favor?"

Yawning widely, the tiny lavender-haired girl nodded. "What is it?"

A set of keys and a ten-dollar bill found its way into her hand. "I'm whipping Wil into shape, and it would be really awesome if you could get me something to eat. And stuff for yourself, of course." A bright smile, a flip of the mouthpiece on her headset later, and Rebecca was back in the game. "Dammit Wil, why did you have to tame the ugliest bear in the game?"

For a long moment, Florina looked down at the money and the keys before blinking and shuffling over to her boots. She slipped them on with relative ease and pulled her coat down from its hook, wrapping her scarf around her neck after she had buttoned it up.

She didn't bother to bid her roommate goodbye; with the way the girl was shouting "_Instant cast-Pyroblast, yes!"_, it wouldn't be worth the attempt. She'd never hear her, anyway.

The weather was considerably warmer than it had been only days before, but she knew it was only a spell. Things would get cold again, and there was always the chance of it snowing at least one more time before things stayed warmer. Once she had started Rebecca's old, old Oldsmobile, she quickly made her way to the nearest fast food place.

She smiled as she drove, remembering how earlier in the week, she had managed to say hello to the nice boy that had commented on her art, once. He was pretty cute, she thought to herself, but she hadn't seen him since to try and say hello to him again. It was only a walk over to the room he shared with Wil, but… He was probably out sick, since a flu had been going around. Even Professor Araphen was out because of it.

She hoped that he was okay, though. The nice boy, not Professor Araphen. The professor wasn't nice to Lyn, so she couldn't say that she didn't almost wish that he would stay sick for a long time.

After food was purchased, she drove back to the dorm and made sure to glance next door to the building she knew the nice boy lived in. Once inside, she was startled to find Wil and his computer in the room. Wil and Rebecca were shouting at each other with wild abandonment and glee—a rather confusing combination.

With a timid smile, she dropped a few sandwiches on Rebecca's desk and took a seat on her bed, staring into the paper bag at the two sandwiches that remained.

Wil grinned, "Sorry to barge in and everything, but—ahh! I totally didn't see that rogue!—Guy's down sick with the flu and I didn't want it so—you know, maybe we should do a three versus three and get Nino or heck, I hear Professor Reglay plays—I came here to hide from the germs and dangers of the world." He grinned again and looked back at his screen.

"Wil, you idiot, you died."

"Aww, darn it…"

Florina lowered her head and shrugged uncomfortably. "It's okay," she whispered. She had wanted to read, but she'd never get anything read with those two in the room playing their loud games.

She looked back down into the bag. She wasn't really very hungry… She got back up and grabbed the book she needed to finish reading by Monday afternoon before she left the room, waving to the completely distracted dynamic duo who continued to hurl all kinds of exclamations at their computer screens.

She pulled her scarf around her neck snugly as the wind outside of her dorm hit her. It hadn't been too bad a few minutes before, but as she trudged down the sidewalk, she wondered if maybe they were expecting snow; it almost felt as if the temperature had actually dropped by a few degrees.

Just then, she looked back down into her paper bag again, and then up, across the parking lot at the tall dorm that she knew the nice boy lived in. She thought she had heard Wil call him Guy, but who named their kid that? Maybe it was a nickname.

A smile flickered across her face as an idea struck her, and her boots slapped against the asphalt as she ran to the other dorm building. Her pajama bottoms were a little damp by the time she got to the stairs that led inside, but she made it there quickly and avoided everyone else. It took her a moment to remember which room was Wil's—she had gone over there before to find Rebecca for class—and when she was standing outside of the room, she found that she was trembling just the slightest bit.

A breath, one long…long breath…

She let the air of her lungs in one quick _whoosh_.

Pulling her pen out of the inside of her book, she clicked the end of it to expose the point and scribbled on the bag: _Get Well Soon_.

A pretty little heart that she immediately felt stupid for putting there because it kind of sent out the wrong message, and a few beads of sweat later, she set the bag on the ground and took another deep breath before pounding mercilessly on his door with her fist. Okay, so it wasn't very loud considering she was the one knocking, but the sound itself startled her and she took off down the hall quickly before he could answer the door and see her.

She would go to the library to read and to collect her thoughts and her wits, she thought as she finally made her way to the stairs at the end of the hall. One quick glance backward showed his door opening, and she squeaked a little and took the stairs two at a time, her short legs barely able to manage it.

…_**xOx…**_

He was so proud that he was practically bursting at the seams. "Have I told you that I've got a date with the amazingly beautiful Miss Owens this evening?"

His roommate looked up over the rims of his reading glasses and scratched at his head, slightly. "Four times in the last hour," he said.

"Only four? Well, let's make it five. Guess what? I have a date with the amazingly beautiful Miss Owens this evening." A wide grin, and then, "Lucius, aren't you happy for me?"

"Of course," the other man answered, looking back down at his desk. "But I missed a few days of class and I've got to try and figure out how to do this…this…" He waved his hand dismissively at his anatomy book. "Stuff. This stuff."

Sain nodded solemnly. "Do you think a suit would be over the top?"

Lucius raised an eyebrow and tucked his pen behind his ear as he leaned back and stretched. "Are you planning on going somewhere expensive?"

"Only the best for a lady," he answered. "I like your shirt. Can I wear it?"

"Eh?" The blond looked down at his striped green and white collared shirt and flicked his gaze back to Sain. "No."

"Okay." He thumbed through his wardrobe, finally finding a nice pair of khaki slacks and a green, black, and white striped shirt…that had a collar. "This might work," he mumbled, looking at it carefully.

"Wear a black undershirt," Lucius suggested, looking down at his own white one. "That way you can leave it unbuttoned if you end up somewhere where the atmosphere is more relaxed and casual." He flipped his low ponytail behind his shoulder and plucked his pen out from behind his ear again.

"Have I told Kent ye—"

"Kent is busy and has been all day. You shouldn't bother him." He pointed his finger in Sain's general direction, not looking up from his scribbled notes.

"He's always busy. What's he doing, anyway?"

"Helping Lyn."

"Oh, but of course!" Sain's hazel eyes lit up with a fiery intensity as he clutched his clothes in a fist before pumping it into the air. "The guy is finally going to put himself out there!" When Lucius threw him an odd look, he merely shrugged, "He's had the biggest crush on her since… Hell, since he first laid eyes on her! I swear, he talked about nothing else for like, months. He still doesn't talk about much else! Lyndis and school." Sighing a little, the Elementary Education major tossed his clothes on the bed and rummaged for his bathroom supplies. "Well, now that he's, quote, "helping", unquote, Lyn, maybe he'll get that out of his system."

"Get what out of his system?"

"All his rambling and never doing anything. Now that he has a chance to do something romantic…"

Smiling slightly in amusement, Lucius brushed his bangs out of his eyes. "I don't think there is anything romantic about installing handicap rails in the bathroom."

Sain blinked. "Well, knowing Kent, he'd think it was sexy. He has odd taste." Finally, he found his shampoo and hair conditioner—because he wanted silky, shiny beautiful hair, too!—oh, and his deodorant. "I'm going to make myself look awesome for my date in a few hours," he said. "You, uh, work on that…stuff."

And with that, Sain was gone, whistling cheerfully as he practically skipped down the hall. He sure as heck wasn't going to be late, late, late, for a very important date!

…_**xOx…**_

_Oh, please,_ she prayed to herself, fist pounding against her steering wheel with every word. _Please, please, please make it._

The engine sputtered as she managed to pull into the parking lot of her dorm. Stupid von Ostia had taken the parking spot he had deemed his own, and carefully, she maneuvered her car into the spot next to it. It wasn't the best spot in the lot, but it was the next-best. She would settle…for now.

Grinning, relief written all over her face that her car had brought her from Point A to Point B (namely, from the gas station back to the dorm), she pulled her keys out of the ignition and pushed open her rather creaky door.

She swore she heard something clatter when the door slammed shut again. And again. Oh, and again, because if it wasn't shut _just right_, it wouldn't shut at all. (And she couldn't afford to let the seats get moldy if it happened to rain inside her car.)

Pushing open the door to her dorm room, she noticed Serra sitting on her bed, painting her toenails the brightest, sparkliest shade of pink known to man. Or rather, woman.

"Hey," the other girl said in a sing-song voice, not looking up from her nails lest she accidentally ruin them. "Did you make it back okay?"

"Barely." Farina took off her jacket and threw it on a hook before flopping onto her bed and kicking off her tennis shoes. She tossed a bag at Serra and it landed on the bed. "Don't forget to pay me back for that. I don't have that kind of money."

"Neither do I." Feeling on the bed beside her without looking, she threw a few bills in Farina's direction. They landed on the floor.

Silently, she retrieved them.

"If I were made of money," Serra continued, "I would be driving a nice car like _someone_ we all know—"

"Who is a total jackass," Farina interrupted.

"Who isn't that bad, actually. I mean, sure, he's a jerk, but he does have money. That should count for something, shouldn't it?"

"Pff. Barely." Running a hand through her dark hair, she fell back onto her bed. "Think about it, Serra. He comes cruising in here in his fancy car and his family's money is paying for everything for him. It's no big deal if he fails a class because he can afford to just take it again." She crinkled her nose and shook her head.

"Did you know his parents are dead?" Tossing one pink pigtail over her shoulder casually, Serra looked up and raised an eyebrow. "I think I can identify with him a little bit, in that regard, and so should you. Even though he _does_ flaunt his money sometimes."

"A lot of the time, you mean." She wiggled her toes and stared up at the ceiling. "Well, I can identify with that. But my parents didn't leave me any kind of fortune, and at least he wasn't separated from his brother like I was my sisters."

"At least your sisters stayed relatively close, I guess. And you're going to school with them now. And," she said, holding her foot out to investigate her paint job, "at least you had someone to write letters to when you were bounced around in foster care."

"Sorry," she mumbled, just as a loud banging down the hall and frenzied shouting of joy made its way through their obviously-not-soundproof door.

"Girls," a gentle, lovely voice said as its speaker quietly opened their door and poked her head inside.

"Hello, Ninian," Serra answered, looking up.

Farina lifted her head off of her pillow to see Ninian smiling, Eliwood waving slightly from the hall, and Hector grin evilly—she _swore_ that grin was evil—as he marched by, boxes in hand.

"Hector bought everyone in the dorm pizza. If you'd like some, there's plenty in the lounge downstairs. Go ahead and grab yourselves a box." With a smile, the other girl shut the door.

"Damn rich bastard," both women muttered at the same time.

Farina sighed, "I told you he flaunted having money far too often."

"Who cares? Let's get some pizza. It's _free_."

…_**xOx…**_

Lyndis groaned and buried her face in her pillows as she swatted to silence the worst sound in the entire world…for the third time that morning. Or was it fourth? She didn't know, couldn't remember. All she remembered was being up way, way too late the night before. And a headache. And, and…

She didn't even bother to reset her alarm.

Half an hour later, something…tugged at the edge of her consciousness, but she curled up into a tight little ball and buried herself under her pillows and blankets and chose to ignore it. Her head still hurt and for that matter, her throat was a little scratchy.

Two hours later, she heard the strangest sound…and nearly fell out of her bed in fright. Until she realized what it was, of course.

_The doorbell._

With a choking sound in the back of her throat, she did fall to the floor of her bedroom, tangled in all her blankets. After a minute, she freed herself and ran for the door.

Kent was supposed to come over and help her make the house handicap-accessible. She had been up late the night before in the nursing home, talking with her grandfather. He had signed a check so that they could buy the materials to do so, and then she had done homework until the early hours of the morning.

Messy hair, bleary eyes and all, she opened the door. Completely out of breath, she could only smile at him sheepishly. "Sorry," she gasped after a time, pressing a hand to her heart as if it would slow it down to normal. "I slept in."

He came inside and shut the door behind him, locking it because he knew she preferred things that way. That was what living alone had done—it had her slightly paranoid. "It's okay," he told her, pocketing his keys. "That's why I'm here so late."

"You knew I would?" She scrunched up her nose at him and shook her head as she crossed her arms over her chest. It was terribly chilly, even in her long-sleeved shirt and sweatpants. "Yeah, right. I don't believe you."

She was teasing him, but he didn't insist that he was telling the truth as he usually would. He merely shrugged, not saying a word about how she _always_ slept in. Something was up, she just knew it. She was hesitant to ask about it, though.

"I'll go g…" She paused, feeling something tickling at her nose. "I'll ge…" There it was again! This time the pressure was heavier. "G… Get ready." She barely had the words out of her mouth before her hands flew to her mouth and she sneezed, once, twice, _three times_. "Sorry," she mumbled afterward, sniffling a little bit and smiling embarrassedly.

"Are you okay?" He peered down at her, brown eyes concerned.

"I'm fine," she said. "I'll be ready to leave in a few minutes. If you're hungry or thirsty or anything, help yourself."

He nodded and wandered off toward the kitchen, and she bounded up the stairs, glad that she hadn't gotten snot sprayed all over her hands when she had sneezed. She swallowed, not liking the itchiness she felt, and sighed. She was probably coming down with a stupid cold or something. Just her luck. Her grandfather was coming home the following Friday, though, so she didn't have time to be sick.

Especially considering that after she and Kent made the house handicap accessible, they both had to buckle down and study for exams. They were the following week, and Lyn feared that she wasn't ready for any of them, particularly Chemistry.

Reaching her bedroom, she didn't even bother closing her door, knowing that Kent would stay downstairs. She picked up a tissue from the box on her nightstand and blew her nose before throwing it away in the trashcan beside her desk. A few steps further and she was in front of her closet.

They had to go to the hardware store to get the rails needed for the bathroom and key points of the house—like the two or three steps that led downward from the dining room to the kitchen—and for reasons she couldn't quite understand, she wanted to dress…nice.

It wasn't that she didn't usually dress nice, but she wanted to look especially nice. Because she was going somewhere with Kent. But she had done that before and hadn't worried over her appearance nearly so much. It was all very strange.

Finally, she settled on a nice pair of jeans and a long-sleeved blouse with a collar. It wasn't ridiculously cold outside, but she grabbed a pair of leggings from her dresser drawer, regardless, and changed her clothes before heading to the bathroom to do her hair.

She tried to hurry; even though she wanted to look nice, she didn't want to make Kent wait. After all, he was doing her an immense favor. He didn't even know how big a favor it was he was doing. His thoughts on the matter were simple. He was there, he could do the job, so he would do it. She could easily pay someone else to do it with money given to her by her grandfather for that very purpose, but the thought of letting a stranger into her house didn't settle well with her at all.

After having someone look at the plumbing, once, she hadn't been able to sleep for nearly a week, tossing and turning, wondering if they had noticed a way into the house that she didn't know about, if they were hiding somewhere at that very moment… She had checked the locks and the windows before retiring to bed, and she had wanted to check them again after tossing and turning, but she was too nervous to get up.

As she pulled the brush through her hair, slightly tangled from sleep, she let out what was probably the hundredth sigh of relief concerning the matter of her grandfather's return and the work that had to be done before he would officially be approved to come home.

_Home._ She smiled a little and finished brushing her hair out. Her hands started to grab at her hair to pull it all back, but something stopped her. Blinking, she licked her lips and tilted her head to the side, slightly. No, it looked okay down. She grabbed a couple of clips to pin the sides back away from her face and ran her fingers through her hair to make sure she didn't have any loose strands before making her way downstairs again.

The look of surprise on his face was worth it. "Your hair…" he murmured, standing from his seat at the kitchen table when she came into the room. The table was clean, which meant he hadn't eaten anything. There was a glass in the dish drainer, though, that hadn't been there previously.

She reached a hand to the back of her head self-consciously, "Yeah, it would take me longer to put it up. I've made you wait long enough; I should have been ready when you got here." She grabbed her coat from the rack and shrugged into it, pulling her hair out of the back of it before she zipped it up. "Should I have put it up?" Her voice held the smallest bit of amusement in it, but she was a little curious…

"No, no…" He flushed a little and looked terribly uncomfortable. "It looks nice…like that."

Smiling, she grabbed her purse from another hook on the rack and pulled out her keys. "Good, let's get this show on the road."

…_**xOx…**_

Once they arrived at the hardware store, the necessary supplies were purchased in short order. The only incident was one that involved being asked if he and Lyndis were first-time homeowners. Oh, and the older woman working the checkout who asked if they were expecting a baby.

It wasn't as if they were buying something like cream for stretch marks, or baby clothes. No, they were buying rails to install by the toilet and in the shower. Maybe she thought he was looking out for his "pregnant wife". Never in a million years would he think that someone might assume that…that…

Lyn had only grinned widely while he blushed furiously. "Actually, it's kind of the opposite," she said. "My grandfather's coming home and the house has to be handicap-accessible. So he—" she pointed a thumb toward Kent, "—is my slave for the day."

He blushed worse and tried to protest, "L-Lyndis!"

She crinkled her nose cutely and turned back to the lady. "He's really doing me a big favor by helping me out so I don't have to pay someone else to come and do it."

The woman shook her head, grey hair swishing back and forth with the movement. "Honey," she said, ringing up the total, "it's getting rarer and rarer these days to find a man who can use a drill, let alone a man that owns one. Hold onto this one." She then winked at Kent.

He blushed again. He couldn't wait to get out of there, and as they finally left a few minutes later—with him carrying almost everything since it was most certainly the chivalrous thing for a man to do—he was startled to see Lyndis grinning.

"She was nice, wasn't she?"

"Who?" He was a little distracted by one of the strands of her hair had come out of the hairclip by her temple and was hanging in her face.

"Hannah. The cashier lady. That's what her nametag said, anyway." She frowned slightly and took the clip out, fixing her hair.

He was a little disappointed but said nothing.

He tried to shift the bags in his hands to grab his keys out of his jacket's pocket, but failed miserably. On the third try, Lyn reached into his pocket—to his embarrassment—and pulled them out, unlocking the doors so that he could put everything inside. When he climbed into the driver's seat, she handed him back his keys and grinned at the little metallic cat with other charms hanging off of it—like a milk bottle, a fish bone, and a pawprint—not to mention the laser pointer.

"You like cats?" she asked, pressing his keys into his hand, blushing slightly when their skin touched. He noticed but was only confused by it. "I didn't know that."

"When I got this truck," he said, "I had a cat." Indeed he had. The feisty creature had been orange and white striped, and he had given her the name Sunshine.

"You don't have her anymore?" She buckled her seatbelt and glanced sideways at him.

He didn't look up at all, he only put his keys into the ignition and turned them, waiting until he heard the rev of the engine before he spoke, "She died."

"I-I'm sorry." Lyndis seemed to sink down into her seat a little bit and opted to look out of the window instead of at him.

He felt guilt nip at his heart, and he forced himself to speak. "It's okay. It's not your fault." He'd had actually brought the cat home for his ailing mother. Struggling through chemotherapy was hard enough, but with him at school and his father at work, that left her at home for hours on end without any company at all. Sunshine had literally been the light of her life until her death. Afterward, the cat had become his. Until…

Until his father had come home drunk—which he did more and more often after Ellen's death—and had, in a fit of anger, kicked the cat so hard it had broken several bones. Kent had taken her to the vet, but he knew his father wouldn't pay the bill, and he couldn't afford to pay it, either.

More than anything, he had wanted that cat to live, but after weighing the pros and cons, he had decided, very reluctantly, to have her put down. He shuddered just to remember the way he had held her as they had injected her. And then, the way she had slowly faded away in his arms…

His hands were trembling as he took hold of the steering wheel of his truck, so he tightened his grip, his knuckles turning white.

The drive back was quiet, completely silent. The radio stayed off. The cds didn't get shoved into the disc player—something Lyndis did quite often that he didn't really mind. The only sound in the car was Lyn sniffling, and at first he had been alarmed at hearing it. His head whipped around to look at her. He never had been any good with women; he always said and did the _stupidest_ things. Heaven forbid that he actually make her cry, though!

But it seemed that she was merely in need of a tissue, which relieved him immensely. Until he noticed that her cheeks were bright red, not to mention her ears.

As soon as they arrived at her grandfather's house, they took everything inside and had a late lunch consisting of sandwiches and water. Simple, but filling enough. Many, many hours later, they walked through the house to make certain that rails had been put anywhere and everywhere they needed to be to ensure the safety of Lyn's grandfather.

Kent set the stud-finder down on a table in the hall while Lyn tested the strength of the rail he had just installed. "This is good," she said, and picked up the stud-finder, inspecting it curiously for a moment before her eyes lit up with that mischievous spark that usually meant he would be blushing at any given moment. (As if he hadn't blushed enough already that day!)

She pressed the little black box against his chest and moved it around a little bit, laughing when it beeped.

"I think I found one," she said, and sure enough, he felt his face warm up.

Ignoring her comment—because acknowledging it would only spell further embarrassment for him—he took back the stud-finder and looked around. "Is there anywhere else you can think of?"

"Well," she said, looking thoughtful. "I doubt he'll be moving around too much, and certainly not up the stairs at all. He'll have his walker…" She shook her head, "I can't think of anyplace else."

She helped him collect his tools and put them neatly into a toolbox he had brought into the house from his truck. Latching and locking the lid—because he took exceptionally good care of his things—he sighed, pushing his bangs out of his eyes. "It's rather late…"

She nodded and crouched down next to him, "It's 10:36 right now."

Slowly, he got to his feet before holding out his hand to help her up. Twisting around, he tried to work a kink out of his back. "I should probably…get home." Truth be told, he didn't really want to leave. It was a Saturday night, and that meant that his father was home, because he didn't work on Saturdays. It also meant that his father would be home the next day, too, and he would probably be up late watching the television and drinking something stronger than beer.

He shrugged into his coat and was pulling the zipper up when Lyn's hand on his stopped him. Blinking, partially in confusion, partially in embarrassment—it seemed he had been doing that a lot lately—he raised an eyebrow slightly.

"You helped me out all day. I can't let you go home without feeding you, first."

"That's okay," he protested. "I can eat at—"

"Like you even have food in your house." She waved her hand at him dismissively before grabbing her own coat and pulling it on. "Let's go grab something from whatever fast-food place is still open." She snatched up her purse and keys before shoving him toward the door. "I'll pay, you pick."

"I can't let you—"

"_I'm_ paying, and there's nothing you can do about it." She enunciated each word carefully and gave his back a gentle push with each one. "It's almost like payment for helping me out."

Hah, payment. Well, he had to bite his lip to keep from telling her that just being with her all day was reward enough for him. "S-Since you're paying, then," he finally managed to say. "You should pick what we eat."

She seemed to consider it as she locked the front door. "Okay, that's fine." She grinned, "But it'll take a while to get there."

At almost midnight, they were back with subs from a place almost two towns away.

"I'll pay you for the gasoline, too," she said as she hopped out of his truck and closed the door behind her. "And don't argue."

Once inside the house again, Kent couldn't deny that he was feeling rather nervous. He had been in Lyndis's house plenty of times before, but he had only started staying there late in the evening after her grandfather had been moved into the nursing home due to a stroke. He had never stayed too late, though, and midnight was definitely approaching the _too late_ line. He didn't know what to do or say, though. They hadn't even eaten their food yet, and Lyn was reaching for some soda-pop at the back of the refrigerator.

She handed him a Sunkist, and propped—unsurprisingly—a Mountain Dew on top of her foil-wrapped still-warm sub. Turkey, he thought absently to himself as she grabbed some paper plates from a stack by the microwave. Lyndis liked turkey. He had gotten ham and pepperoni.

"Since it's already pretty late," she said, finally managing to balance all of the stuff she was carrying so that she could lock the front door. "I was thinking that maybe we could watch a movie. Or television, but there probably isn't anything on right now."

"A movie… That sounds fine." He didn't sound particularly enthusiastic, but in all honesty, it was late, and he was tired; he wondered if he would even be able to manage to stay awake through an entire movie.

She smiled, and he suddenly felt better about the entire thing.

Once they had deposited their things on the coffee table—drinks on coasters, of course—Lyndis took off for the upstairs to change into her pajamas, and Kent headed for the downstairs bathroom.

Ten minutes later, they met back in the family room. Lyn had a couple of blankets draped over her arm, and she had changed into a black long-sleeved shirt and fuzzy blue pajama bottoms. He smiled at her attire, glad that she was too busy arranging her things on the couch to notice.

He pulled the coffee table closer to the couch and took a seat at the far end, propping up the recliner.

Lyn crouched down in front of a shelf of DVDs and looked over her shoulder at him, "I know that you don't watch movies very often, but we don't have too many to choose from…"

"Anything that you want to watch is fine," he said softly. He meant it.

"Okay, uhm…" Finally, her hand landed on a well-worn case and she pulled it out, holding it up for him to see. He squinted a little and shrugged; he couldn't read the title at all. "It's a classic," she insisted. "I've seen it a million times."

Once the DVD was in the player, she plopped down next to him, leaving plenty of space on her other side, and carefully lifted his glasses off of his face.

"What…?"

"They're dirty," she said. "That's why you can't see anything." With a grin, she breathed on them and rubbed the temporary fog away with her shirt. He forced himself to look away when he caught a brief glimpse of the skin of her stomach.

Swallowing a little nervously, he leaned forward and grabbed one of the paper plates before unwrapping his sub and setting it on it. He opened his drink, and then hers, because sometimes she would complain about being unable to because her fingernails were too short.

When he sat back in his seat, sandwich in hand, she awkwardly put his glasses back on his face. They were crooked and almost gave him a headache, so he adjusted them with the edge of one of his fingers. The title screen showed itself, and he had just finished reading the title of the movie—_Ever After_—when her arms wrapped tightly around him.

Blushing furiously, and having never been more relieved that the room was dark, his mouth refused to form actual words. It just opened, slightly. He was glad he hadn't actually taken a bite of his sandwich or it might have ended up in his lap in a chewed, slobbery mess that considered of ham, bread, banana peppers, lettuce, pepperoni and mayonnaise. Not a pleasant sight to behold.

"Thank you for helping me today," she whispered, barely understandable over the sound of the television. She pressed her lips against his cheek and pulled away a moment later.

He could still feel the warmth against his skin when he managed to stammer out a, "Y-You're welcome…of course."

He was so embarrassed he could have disappeared beneath the cushions of the couch, but that only enabled his mind to think that hey, then Lyndis would be sitting on top of him, and it only made him blush redder. Quickly, he stuffed some food into his mouth before he could say something stupid.

Lyndis yawned and reached for the remote, pushing the play button before she settled in, legs pulled up underneath her.

Forty-five minutes into the movie—which he had, of course, been paying strict attention to because it was clearly Lyn's favorite—she had abandoned her half-eaten sub on the coffee table and had managed to drink most of her can of Mountain Dew. Her eyes were drifting shut only for her head to jerk back up as the movie continued.

He started to pay less attention to the movie. Just a little.

An hour into the movie, and her eyes were closed, head leaning back against the couch, legs tucked only slightly beneath her, a pillow held securely in her hands. He smiled a little but tried to keep his mind on the movie.

An hour and fifteen minutes into the movie, though, he felt a sudden weight on his shoulder; it startled him a little, his right hand fisting in his lap, but he immediately relaxed. For a moment. Lyndis's head had fallen to his shoulder, her legs close to the edge of the couch. One of her knees rested on the edge of his right leg.

She was definitely fast asleep. Carefully, he tried to reach for the remotes, but failed. So he waited a few more minutes. The end of the movie was getting closer with every second, but he wasn't paying attention to it anymore. Even though he was curious to know how it would end, it wasn't nearly as interesting as Lyndis. Drew Barrymore just couldn't compare.

Finally, he used his foot to grasp the remote—a not-really talent that he hadn't admitted to anyone—and turned the television's volume down before grabbing the DVD player's remote and setting it on the arm of the couch next to him. It only took a few more minutes for him to carefully reach over to unsnap the clips from her hair. He tossed them onto the coffee table, glad that they landed rather quietly. He pushed her hair back from her face, noticing two things at the same time.

First, she was breathing out of her mouth, and second, her skin was hot. Concerned, he flipped his hand over and pressed the back of it against her forehead. It was definitely unnaturally warm. She squirmed a little and sighed at the feeling of his cool skin, trying to get away from it.

She was probably feeling cold, herself, he thought, and held her in place while he leaned over and snatched up one of the blankets she had carried downstairs. He shook it out and draped it over her, making sure it covered her feet.

He wasn't quite sure what he was going to do, but he sat back and tried to watch the rest of the movie even though he felt his own eyes slowly closing. A part of him wanted to wake Lyndis up to insist that she take something to bring her fever down, but he didn't have the heart to disturb her.

As the movie came to a close, he realized that he hadn't even seen the ending. The credits rolled, and he sighed quietly to himself as he turned off the DVD player and the television, setting the remotes on the end table beside the couch. The room was completely dark; he couldn't see anything.

_I should go home,_ he thought to himself as he absent-mindedly twisted some of Lyn's hair around his fingers. But he was comfortable. He was content. He didn't want to have to wake Lyndis up; he didn't want to leave her at all. Without thinking, his right hand came around behind her, settling lightly on the middle of her back.

She pushed against him a little bit and he grabbed the other blanket and draped it over her, too, before letting his hand rest on her back again. It wasn't as if anyone else could see, and Lyndis…she wouldn't mind, would she? It would only be for…for a few minutes, anyway.

Closing his eyes tiredly, he used his left hand to remove his glasses. Folding them up, he put them on the end table along with the remotes, and tilted his head to rest against hers.

It was nice, he decided, half-asleep already. It seemed right. It was too bad he didn't have the courage to tell her that. He let out a breath and pressed his lips against the top of her head; if she could kiss his cheek, he could kiss her hair, right?

He mumbled something, maybe it was _good night_, but he intended to get up in just a moment… He really had to get home; it was ridiculously late and… and…

He fell asleep.

* * *

…_**xOx…**_

**Author Notes:**

This story had to go somewhere. Hopefully there will be more cute stuff to come in the near future. Possibly a fight between Kent and Lyndis, too. I have plans for Hector and Farina. And Sain's date, how do you think it went? Heh heh heh. Thanks so much for reading, everyone. I'm glad you've all enjoyed it so far. Please leave feedback if you have the time.


	5. Chapter Four: Concern All Around

**Looking For a Little Canon in D****  
By: Manna

* * *

**

…_**xOx…**_

**Chapter Four: Concern All Around**

He found himself waking up in a rather strange predicament.

The sun normally woke him up, streaming through the window on the far side of his small bedroom. But golden rays of light couldn't make their way into the living room of Lyndis Rivièra thanks to the heavy drapes that covered every single window in the room.

So when he found himself stirring, his body yelling at him to wake up already, he was something more than confused to find everything around him fairly dark. Dark meant it was the middle of the night… Considering he had gone to bed somewhere close to two in the morning, it seemed impossible for him to wake up again so soon, before the sun had bothered to show itself.

Eventually, he shifted slightly, and a lot of things happened at once.

First, he heard a mumbled, protesting sort of sound. Second, a hand clutched at his pant leg. Third, he remembered falling asleep in Lyndis's house.

Lastly, he opened his eyes.

If he hadn't been granted with such amazing self-control, he was certain he would have leapt from the couch and shouted in abject horror at the sight of the girl he was certain he loved…lying, of all places, in his lap. He managed to hold himself together, if only for her sake, and because the night before had come flooding back. It wasn't as if they had actually done anything that warranted him panicking.

No, they had fallen asleep in innocent-enough positions, hadn't they? With her head on his shoulder, his cheek against her hair…

Well, perhaps that was not-so innocent. But it certainly wasn't worth worrying about…

Slowly, his heart rate returned to normal, and his breathing along with it. Shifting his back, slightly, he reached over to the end table beside him and grabbed his glasses, putting them on. The clock on the other side of the room read _8:14am_, and he sighed a little, still tired but knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was absolutely no way he'd ever manage to get back to sleep.

Not with Lyndis's head in his lap, anyway.

Something deep down inside him told him to just get up, but she had had a fever the night before and was clearly sick with some kind of flu… She was also exhausted and using him as a pillow. In the end, he ignored whatever it was inside him that was telling him to get up; Lyndis deserved to be left to sleep.

Even if it meant he had to stay right where he was to let her do so. It was a sacrifice he was willing to make, though in no way was it a very difficult one.

Looking down, he noticed that her hair was tangled and he spent a few minutes gathering it together, pulling it out of the back of her shirt—which only dragged the tag out, so he had to tuck that in, too—and letting it rest behind her head…which meant her hair was resting in his lap, also.

Not that he minded terribly much.

Or at all, really.

Lyn liked sleeping as much as—if not more than—the next person, but there was a big difference between watching her nap and watching her sleep. When she tried to grab a few minutes of rest, she was still…there, still partially awake, but when she slept, she was vulnerable.

It made him feel protective, and for no real reason. _Absolutely ridiculous_, he thought to himself. But Lyn slept in the two-story Victorian alone, and nobody was aware of what went on around them while they slept.

He smiled down at her half-heartedly, petting her hair, but careful not to wake her. She was sick, exams were coming up all too soon, and the fact that Old Man Hausen—as the neighborhood kids had always called him—was coming home meant she needed every last ounce of rest that she could procure.

Her stress levels were probably at an all-time high. He knew she was worried about exams. Lyndis hardly ever studied hard, but she had been spending an unnaturally large amount of her free time staring at chemistry equations.

Professor Araphen was a difficult teacher, to be certain, but he seemed to really dislike Lyndis. Kent couldn't see why the old man didn't like Lyn—after all, he liked pretty much _everything_ about her, himself—but it didn't really matter. His attitude toward her was uncalled for; he had never felt so much indignation toward another human being before, not really, and he couldn't wait for the quarter to end so that she wouldn't be in Araphen's class any longer.

It was probably one of the biggest things weighing on her mind.

Almost as if she knew his thoughts were on her, she sighed and twisted a little, resting her head on his thigh as she gave the material of his pant leg a squeeze. For a moment, he feared she would wake, but she dozed on, seemingly settled again.

He didn't know how to explain the situation to her, or even if she would expect him to.

While he pondered on the little issue that would soon be at hand, he gently ran his fingers through her hair.

No amount of thinking helped him, though. The moment her eyes started to flutter and a soft groan escaped from between her lips, he panicked and slumped back against the couch, letting his eyes close.

He wished he could see what was going on, but he listened intently, sure to keep his breathing deep and even. She was clearly confused, judging by the way she seemed to hesitate before sitting up. The pillow that she had been clutching in her arms was dumped into his lap, and silence fell over the room before she coughed and stirred again.

"So cute…" she murmured to herself only moments before he felt her fingertips against his temples as she gently took his glasses off of his face.

He'd have blushed in embarrassment at her strange compliment, but she'd realize he was only pretending to sleep if he allowed himself to do it, so he feigned indifference as she brushed his bangs to one side of his face. It wasn't long before she left, stumbling a bit on her way up the stairs.

Relief coursed through him when he was certain she was gone, but then he opened his eyes and noticed that her blankets were still on the couch—so was the pillow she had left on his lap.

He hated to deceive her—she deserved so much better—but he hadn't known what else to do except let her think he was asleep. It almost felt like a betrayal of sorts…

He didn't have time to dwell on the matter, though. He pushed the recliner down and deposited the pillow where he had been sitting as soon as he got to his feet. He'd stay to make sure that Lyndis would be all right, of course—he owed her that much—but he needed to get home.

He headed for the kitchen.

…_**xOx…**_

Lyn felt…horrible, in every sense of the word. Her head was pounding, her throat was sore, and she felt so tired that it was probably a miracle she made it up the staircase without falling down it.

The afternoon before, she hadn't felt very well, either, but…it had been bearable, at least. What she originally mistook as a cold was an all-out flu, and she sighed miserably as she peeled off her pajamas and forced herself into the stream of hot water that poured from her shower.

She went through the motions of washing her hair and shaving her legs and underarms, but her mind was hardly on the tasks so much as it was on her bed, and the fact that it was waiting for her, soft and comfortable…

She shivered when she stepped out of the shower, the colder air hitting her like a ton of bricks, making her feel almost nauseous. Ignoring it, she toweled herself and then her hair before going into her bedroom. She picked the warmest pajama bottoms that she could find, and pulled on two shirts—one plain and long-sleeved, the other an oversized sweatshirt that had belonged to her father.

She took the towel to her hair one last time before brushing it out and pulling it into a low ponytail. She didn't care about what it looked like, as her bed sounded particularly inviting after spending so much time—a whole twenty minutes—awake.

When she got to the full-sized mattress, though, she stopped. Her two favorite blankets weren't…there. Confused, she looked around her bedroom before she finally remembered leaving them on the couch downstairs.

With Kent.

_Kent._

She smiled a little and made her way to the stairs before descending quietly in case he was still asleep. He had been terribly cute, lying there _with his glasses on_. She hadn't had many opportunities to see him dozing, and she'd never really minded, much. His eyes were dark and fairly expressive… They told her things he wouldn't, or couldn't. But she hadn't realized before how calm and relaxed he seemed with those eyes hidden behind their lids.

Her blankets were still on the couch—albeit neatly folded, now—but Kent was not. She frowned, but soon heard sounds coming from the kitchen, and she followed them—and her sense of smell—to the cold tiled floor and her very good friend.

The redhead didn't look like he could cook anything, let alone scrambled eggs and bacon, but he was right in front of her doing it, and she flopped down into one of the straight-backed chairs to watch him.

It was odd—she had seen him cook before, but she'd never seen him cooking in her kitchen first thing in the morning. It was almost like one of those cheesy romance movies, except that in the movies, the man only seemed to stay for breakfast if he'd had sex with the woman.

She flushed, but her face was red enough from her fever that it wasn't noticeable. Well, she certainly hadn't…hadn't had _sex_ with Kent, but there he was, using a pair of tongs to turn the bacon over before stirring the eggs to make certain they didn't burn. That fact alone made him infinitely better than any male protagonist from a romance movie.

"How are you feeling?" he asked over his shoulder.

He might have looked concerned, but everything was kind of fuzzy, so she wasn't sure. "Horrible," she mumbled, planting her face onto the surface of the table before burying it in the circle of her arms.

A minute didn't even pass before she heard the _clink_ of a glass on the tabletop, and another, unidentifiable sound that she felt curious enough to investigate…which she did, opening her eyes ever so slightly as she tilted her head.

Pills. She made a face.

"Take them," he insisted softly. "They'll help bring your fever down. And," he mentioned, setting a plate down before her, "eat this, too."

"You're trying to fatten me up before you haul me to the slaughterhouse," she grumbled half-heartedly, spearing a few bites of the scrambled eggs before she took the pills and continued eating the food. The bacon—cooked exactly how she preferred it—felt good as it slid down her sore, itchy throat.

He ignored her comment, probably not able to come up with an appropriate response to it, and simply ate his own food. She felt his eyes on her every now and again, as if he was checking to make sure she didn't slip the food to some invisible dog under the table or something. (But maybe she was just imagining that.)

It wasn't long before her stomach decided it didn't want any more, and she pushed her plate away apologetically. She hadn't grown up with a lot of money, and like Kent, she wasn't the type of person to ever waste food, so she found some plastic wrap and covered her plate before putting it in the 'fridge.

"You're done?" He sounded concerned, but she knew he'd understand.

"I'm afraid if I eat any more, it'll come back up." She smiled sheepishly at him and took a sip of water from the glass he'd placed in front of her before dumping what was left in the sink. "I'll clean everything up," she said, barely managing to cover her mouth before she sneezed. "…Later."

He ignored her words and continued to look a little worried. "Get some rest, Lyndis," he finally told her, shoving food into his mouth immediately after, as if he was afraid he'd say something else.

"You don't have to tell _me_ twice." She wandered over to him and gave him a quick hug from behind, her quiet sigh tickling the back of his neck. "Thank you," she was sure to say, and he swallowed and nodded.

"You're…welcome."

The next thing she knew, she was upstairs with her favorite blankets and pillow. She practically melted into the mattress of her bed, settling down into the warmth it provided her before promptly falling asleep.

…_**xOx…**_

Hector von Ostia _loved_ flaunting his money. He had it, it looked good on him, so why wouldn't he show it off a little? He drove a nice sporty car, owned the most expensive computer known to man—that was, of course, chained to his dorm room floor when on campus—and ate out whenever he pleased while the other students had to watch every penny they could get their hands on. And yes, they watched, too. He couldn't even count the amount of times he'd seen the wench bend over to scoop a penny or a nickel off of the parking lot asphalt.

He wasn't selfish about it, though, or even ridiculous. He didn't own more than one car, and he didn't spend all of his money on himself—though, yes, the speaker system in his car could probably feed old man Merlinus at the campus bookstore for a year.

Oswin, in charge of the finances at Ostia, Incorporated, hated it when he spent a lot of money, so Hector was sure to do it all of the time. What was the stuffy old man going to do about it, anyway? Uther didn't care, and if Uther didn't care, why should Oswin bother worrying about it?

Every now and again, he was sure to bring great food to the dorm. It almost made him a hero, of sorts.

He rolled around restlessly on his bed—_his_ bed, not the stupid hard lumpy mattresses that Caelin University owned. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, and he had no idea what to do with himself. He could play games—Wil, hyperactive psycho that he was, had been trying desperately to get Hector to join what he called a "three versus three" team—but he didn't really feel like turning on his computer even though he knew it would boot up in less than a minute.

Plus, Wil said something about how he'd have to get his rogue—fondly named _TheWench_—up to something like level 80, and he didn't want to move the Farina-like level 1 out of the forest she was currently dead in. It meant he'd have to make TheWench run back to her corpse, first. Ah, it just wasn't worth it.

So he continued rolling around on his comfortable bed. He was home, not in his dorm—though he had identical beds in both places, of course; he was rich like that—and that meant Eliwood was in meetings with his father, and Hector was all alone and bored.

Maybe if he'd have just…stayed on campus, he could tell Farina he'd pay her a dollar to get him some food. Or, just to spite her, he could play pranks on her, graffiti her car—though that would actually improve its look—or feed her. Feeding her had its benefits, and nobody else could figure out what they were except him.

Farina _loved_ free stuff. Making her feel grateful to him was fun. (Or maybe he just liked the look on her face when she asked him what he wanted out of her and he gleefully announced that he required nothing in return.)

Ah, he could take his S2000 out for a drive, but driving wasn't much fun unless it was warm outside, so he scratched that off of his potential list of things to do. He could go for a walk, but that required actually getting dressed… (For some reason, the world didn't think black sweatpants and a white t-shirt were acceptable go-outside clothes.)

He sighed and finally gave into fate.

…_**xOx…**_

She was in the middle of nowhere. She'd probably like driving if she had a nice, dependable car, but she was three hours from campus and the further away she got, the more nervous she felt. It was already early in the afternoon, and she had a couple more hours worth the driving ahead of her.

She didn't care that it was Sunday, or that she had class in the morning. She'd woken up, and she _knew_ that she had to drive. She had to just…just _go_, and she knew where.

Pherae was far from Caelin University, but she needed to speak to someone there. Her head was clouded, and her mind troubled, and—and just…it…

She'd gone to a high school in Pherae…when she had stayed in one of many foster homes. It was okay, there, but only one person had left a positive impression on her: Isadora Watson.

The woman had been a guidance counselor at the school, there, and she was also the one—and only—person Farina had ever bothered to open up to. She liked calling it "spilling her guts", and maybe, just maybe, Farina felt that she could trust Miss Watson more than she could trust anyone else.

Being betrayed had its downsides, after all. It left a person feeling empty and unable to entrust themselves or their past to anyone else.

She admired Miss Watson's quiet strength. She had been in a branch of the military, had gone to school and had decided that helping people was rewarding in its own way. When she had said she wanted to help, Farina knew that she meant it.

Though she hadn't seen her in more than two years, Farina had been certain to keep in touch through email. Upon waking that morning, though, the young woman had one thought in her mind, and it was Miss Watson.

She _needed_ to talk to her.

She hadn't even dressed properly before jumping in her car.

It didn't matter if she missed a class. Or two. Or a day's worth the classes. She couldn't afford to fail, exams were so close she could feel the sweat on her forehead, and she could hardly afford the gasoline to drive there and back, but…but she _had_ to.

If she didn't, she was afraid she'd—!

Her muddled thoughts were interrupted as suddenly, on the other side of a scraggly, knotted walnut tree, Old Faithful stopped working.

It sputtered, lurched, and then died right in the middle of the otherwise-abandoned road.

…_**xOx…**_

Sain awoke to someone shaking him rather violently. He had just—_just_—gotten to sleep, so who in the world would be bothering to rouse him already? It just wasn't…it wasn't fair, that's what!

"Afjdks;hafdksafhkda," he said.

"W-What?" The Shaker of Sain sounded confused. "Sain, are you okay? You stumbled in at dawn looking very out of sorts, and now it's early in the afternoon."

Blearily, he cracked open his eyes and wiped the drool from his chin before rolling over to stare at Lucius. "Blargh," he said intelligently.

"Well, that makes more sense than whatever it was you said before, but…"

His roommate was neat and tidy. Sain looked down at his wrinkled, stained clothes and let his face fall into his pillow.

"Sain, are you…?"

"I'm fine," he finally muttered, picking his head up only to let it fall back into the warm, drool-covered embrace of stained, stuffed cotton.

"Are you _certain_?"

Blinking, Sain rolled over. Lucius barely had time to jump backward before his roommate landed on the floor with a _crashboomthud_. Concerned, he poked the unmoving blob with the toe of his loafer.

"Spaghetti," the man mumbled, rolling onto his back before staring at the bright, shiny fluorescent lights. They almost looked sparkly to his sleep-deprived mind. "Ring. Marriage." He rolled under the bed. "So…tired."

"You should…uh…sleep, then." Lucius would have patted his friend's head in a comforting gesture, but he was busy trying to figure out how a full-grown man could fit under a dorm's bed. "I'll bring you some food."

"Hey, wait…" he called out from his place with the dustbunnies and cobwebs.

"Yes?" Hand paused on the doorknob, Lucius waited patiently for Sain to respond.

"She loves me."

…_**xOx…**_

"But Rebecca, I thought Doomsday was a great name for a bear!"

Guy groaned in what felt like sheer _agony_ before rolling over and covering his head with his pillow.

"Hey buddy!"

Startled, he almost leapt into the air at the voice standing right beside his bed. A voice that was completely different from the one that sounded apologetic, "Aww, fine, I'll name him Foofles."

Even though Matthew's annoying self had awakened him, he could only stare at the ninja—err, uh…whatever it was Matthew _really was_—as he consumed a bag of Skittles that he realized all-too late were _his_.

"So, heard you were dyin' or something, so I thought I'd come and finish you off."

Guy's eyes widened, and Wil even turned to look over his shoulder at their peer.

"I was only teasing. Geesh, can't anyone take a joke? Look, Leila made some soup with all her love and affection, and being the Good Samaritan that I am, I offered to bring it to you." Matthew flopped down on Wil's bed and dumped the rest of the Skittles into his mouth. Guy was sorry to see the beautiful stream of red and blue and yellow disappear.

He paused and stared at the bowl on his nightstand. "Cyanide?" he asked tentatively.

Wil snorted, but Matthew tried to look sad. "As if _I_," he said, pressing his hand against his heart before swallowing, "would do something so horrific."

"No!" the messy-haired man glued to his computer suddenly shouted. "No! Rebecca! _I'll save you!_"

Matthew shrugged and made a face as the Skittles took effect. "You don't have to eat it, you know."

"It looks good. I just don't trust it." Guy felt horrible, and he didn't really want to feel any worse. His head was aching, his limbs were tired, and his brain was fuzzy. Well, fuzzier than usual. He hardly trusted himself to be able to walk to the bathroom without tripping; he'd never chance taking the stairs.

"But you'd trust a random bag of food at your door?"

"Noo…Rebecca… Foofles wasn't fast enough to save you…"

"Sure I would."

"No! Foofles! You can't—you died!" Wil began to frantically pound at his keyboard, shouting all the while. "Feign death! Feign death! Where is it? Where is it?!"

They could hear Rebecca even through the headset, "Wil you idiot. You died."

"I suck at this game!"

"Why yes, you do." Matthew grinned and looked away before Wil could glare at him.

The young man brightened though, and turned away from his computer long enough to look at Guy. "I know who gave you food," he said in a sing-song voice. "Even though my face was glued to a computer monitor, I saw that bag yesterday."

Guy looked over at the bag—that yes, he still had, and no, he didn't plan to throw away any time soon—and forced a smile away from his lips. If Matthew found out his weakness…he'd surely exploit it.

"It was Florina," Matthew said.

"Damn it." A pause, and then, "I-I mean… N-Not 'damn it, it was Florina'! B-But… well… Never mind. Matthew, I'm eating this soup." With almost inhuman speed, he flipped his partially unraveled braid behind his head and grabbed the bowl, slurping down some of the soup. It was so hot it burned. "If it's poisoned, I'll kill you," he added as an afterthought.

"You can't kill me if you're dead."

He spit the soup back into the bowl.

"Relax, I was only kidding! God, why can't anyone take a joke in this place? Erik didn't like the rubber pizza I gave him the other day, and I thought Dart was going to kill me when I emailed him that photoshopped picture of Professor Sol!"

Wil's expression fell. "Professor Sol?" he asked, his voice hollow and almost frightened.

"I had Leila photoshop her head onto someone else's body."

"I…"

"They were in a bathing suit."

"I don't want to know," Wil said, and Guy was too busy trying to scrape the possibly poisoned soup off of his tongue to listen properly.

"I think Dart liked the combination of Professor Sol's head on Sir Wallace's body… That's the truly scary part."

* * *

…_**xOx…**_

**Author Notes:**

Y'all thought this would never get finished, didn't you? I blame this getting updated on Kender.

Other things to note: Isadora's last name was borrowed from LittleGreenBudgie with permission. I could not resist putting more gamer!Rebecca and gamer!Wil in there. Sain's date…will be made clearer next chapter. Farina's past will come up soon. Hector is fun to write. … Something big will happen hopefully next chapter for Lyn and Kent.

Thank you for reading! Feedback is very motivating.


	6. Chapter Five: Crossroads

**Looking For a Little Canon in D  
By: Manna

* * *

**

…_**xOx…**_

**Chapter Five: Crossroads**

Florina was happily painting her toenails an interesting shade of blue when suddenly, Rebecca's fist came down on the surface of her computer desk.

"You stupid mage!" she shouted at the screen. "You pyroblasted yourself into oblivion!" Grumbling in annoyance, the young woman tugged on the end of one of her braids and drummed her fingers against the desk before turning toward Florina, "Either that or she ice-blocked more than just herself. My stupid computer's frozen!"

"M-Maybe you have a virus?" She glanced sadly at the blue streak across the top of her foot before wiping it off with a cloth covered in nail polish remover.

"Nah." The other girl sighed and held in the power button until the screen turned black. "I hate shutting my baby down wrong." Then, after a pause, "But maybe I should scan for viruses, since I haven't done that in a few weeks."

Nodding, Florina put the finishing touches on her pinky toe. "What do you think?" she asked her roommate, turning her foot this way and that.

"Cute, cute. But why blue and white?"

"School colors." Smiling shyly, the small girl shrugged. "I thought it'd be fun."

"It looks nice. You're so artistic, Florina. I'm a little jealous!"

"B-But you can't be! I couldn't even get past level one on that game, and you're so good at it!"

"I'm sure that with practice, you'd get better at it," she said encouragingly. "You sure you don't want to try again? If we got more players, we could raid Crossroads."

Confused, she tilted her head to the side. "Crossroads?" she asked. "Why would I want to raid a crossroads?"

Rebecca rolled her eyes. "To annoy the hell out of the Horde of course," she said matter-of-factly. "If you kill all of the quest-givers, the other players can't turn in the quests they worked so hard to complete! It's a ton of fun, believe me."

"…Right." Honestly, she had no idea what it was Rebecca was talking about. It was probably the only thing that she didn't like about her roommate. On one hand, her enthusiasm for her game was a good thing… It brought her closer to Wil, after all! But on the other hand, she had a tendency to talk to people about it, and no matter how hard she tried to explain whatever it was she wanted to explain, it just didn't make any sense at all. To anyone.

Crossroads and killing people and annoying other players didn't sound like fun, exactly.

"Oh, but if I run a virus scan, it'll take forever… I'll have to run over and tell Wil that it'll be a while before I can finish our epic adventures of epic win."

"Okay." It was a typical, customary response from Florina, especially when Rebecca used the word _epic_ excessively. As an afterthought, she capped her bottle of nail polish and stretched her legs out. "You should study, 'Becca. Exams are coming up really soon…"

"Ah, I'm set," she said, waving a hand dismissively as she turned her computer back on.

Sighing, Florina flopped down against her pillows, "Really? I hope I can p-pass my exams."

"Oh, you'll do fine. You take notes, don't you? You pay attention, don't you?"

Florina glanced at the wall where one of her many drawings was tacked to a bulletin board. She distinctly remembered drawing that with a professor's droning going on in the background. "W-Well…yes," she answered meekly, too embarrassed to admit that she didn't _always_ give the strictest attention to her professors.

Rebecca was nodding, but she wasn't paying her roommate any mind; she was staring at her computer screen as she brought up an anti-virus program and began scanning. "I guess I'll head over to Wil's, then… Maybe I'll watch him play while I wait. Want to come with me?"

She was going to say that no, she really didn't want to go. And truth be told, she'd rather stay where she was. Her bed was warm and comfortable, her toenails were neatly trimmed and freshly painted, and the thought of putting on warmer clothes wasn't exactly appealing.

She could hardly wait for warmer weather. She knew it was coming, and soon.

But it was still uncomfortably chilly and the thought of standing outside in it for even a minute didn't sound like fun. But before she could protest, she found her coat dumped on her head along with her scarf and a pair of fuzzy blue socks.

"O-Okay," she managed to say as she hurriedly tugged on her socks and then slipped her feet into her boots, all the while trying to get into her coat.

Before she knew what was really happening, they were standing outside of Wil's door, and her friend was pounding on it mercilessly as she stared at the wall trying to remember the trip across the street.

It had happened so fast, after all, that she didn't even remember seeing her sister's rusty pile of metal in the parking lot. While she wracked her brain to try and come up with possible reasons for such a thing happening, she realized that a grinning Wil was waving his hand in front of her face.

She blinked and flushed as he laughed.

"Nice to see you back in the real world, Florina. It's a nice place! Come on in. And excuse Guy, he's been out of it all day long."

"O-Only because you kept trying to play that game of yours on the computer while you played tennis on the Wii."

Florina glanced over at the bed closest to the door to see a lump speaking with a pillow over its head. Shaking her own head, she stepped close to Rebecca, crowding the other girl enough to make her push her away a few inches.

"I'm a great multi-tasker," Wil said, nodding toward Florina. "Don't listen to him."

"No you're not, you let your bear—"

"—His name is Foofles!"

"Fine. You let _Foofles_ die while you jumped all over the room waving that remote around."

"Let me guess," Rebecca said, hands on her hips, sly grin on her face. "He didn't fasten the strap on the Wii-mote."

Suddenly, the lump changed positions, and Florina stifled a gasp as Guy appeared from beneath the blankets and pillow, revealing a large rectangular red mark across his forehead. "Gee, what makes you think that?" Then, a moment later, his whole face darkened in a blush, and he mumbled out a, "H-Hello, Florina."

"Uhm…hi," she managed to say in response, still feeling nervous from his sudden appearance.

The fact that Rebecca was in stitches behind her after seeing what Wil had done to Guy was lost on the small girl. She had known Guy was in the tangle of blankets, but…but she hadn't thought, really…that he'd actually _speak_ to her, again.

A-And he was so _cute_, too! She flushed a little, remembering the look on his face as he noticed her presence. He probably hadn't expected her to be standing so close to him, either.

"So Guy, how are you feeling? I heard Matthew was over here trying to end your life or something." Her roommate crinkled her nose and smothered a grin as she sat down, her back against the wall. Florina joined her almost immediately. "Stupid seniors," she teased, elbowing Florina. "They think they're so great, just because they're almost out of school forever. It's just like being back in high school."

"I'm okay," he answered after a moment. "Matthew's evil plot didn't succeed."

"That's good." Rebecca turned to Wil and pulled her knees up against her chest. "I'm doing a major virus scan. It might take some time. That's why we're here bothering you."

Just then, the scariest sound Florina ever heard reached her ears, and she immediately clung to her roommate.

Wil laughed and bent over to give her a friendly pat on the head. "That's just Cruelfin," he said wisely, nodding. "He's a murloc."

"A… A what?" Confused, Florina let go of Rebecca only to hear more of the same sounds. She cringed and blinked up at her brown-haired friend.

"A murloc," he repeated. "From the game."

"A lot of murlocs," Rebecca said sharply. "Wil, you idiot. You died again."

"Aww, I forgot that I was actually _playing_," he muttered, diving for his computer. "I can't believe I was just gang-murdered by a bunch of murlocs…and I'm only level 12! I'm too young to die!"

"At least you didn't let Foofles die again," Guy muttered from his safe place. "I-If you girls could hear the way he carries on every time the bear—I mean, _Foofles_—dies, you'd be happy to see him play something other than a hunter."

"I-I played a… A uhm…" Florina looked at her roommate helplessly.

"A paladin," she said.

"Y-Yeah," she continued. "A paladin."

Guy peeked out at her from beneath his pillow. She could hear the nervousness in his voice, "I haven't played that game. I'm poor, and I don't want to end up like…_him_." He pointed a finger over at Wil, who was frantically pushing buttons on his keyboard and sliding his mouse around as his tongue poked out of the corner of his mouth.

"Booyah!" the young man shouted, nearly falling backward out of his rickety old computer chair. "Cruelfin, taste my priestly wrath!"

A loud clang and then a _thud_, followed by what sounded like a moan floated to Florina's ears courtesy of the speakers hooked up to the computer.

"Guess what, Wil?" Rebecca smirked. "You died again."

"I suck at this game!" he exclaimed. "Now I have to run back to my corpse!"

Florina almost wanted a hard surface to smack her forehead against. Wil was just about as bad as Rebecca when it came to the game. Guy must have noticed the confused look on her face, because he spoke up.

"If you die in-game, your spirit has to find your body. I've seen Wil die enough times to understand how the game works."

"Whereas I never die," Rebecca shrugged. "And Wil, if you'd stop smiting things for like, two seconds so you could heal yourself, you might make a good priest, because you're not really very priestly right now, just…smite-ly."

"But I _like_ smiting things!"

"You should smite some of those equations you haven't finished, yet," Guy said smartly.

"I get A's," he replied, squinting a little as he resurrected his character. "That's all that really matters."

"Y-You don't even have to try."

Florina could tell that Guy wasn't really bitter, but she could sense a little jealousy in his tone. It reminded her of how she felt when she looked at other people who just hung out and had fun and seemed really comfortable about it, like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. She looked down at her lap, feeling a little awkward and out of place.

"Whoa, TheWench signed in!" Wil's gasp was ignored by everyone save Rebecca.

"Who's that? I can't believe you'd call someone a wench!"

"No—it's Hector's character!" he said, still in awe. "He's still level 1, though."

"I can relate," Florina muttered under her breath, glancing up at Guy, who smiled at her shyly from under his blankets in response.

"Guys, guys!" A pause, and then, "Er…everyone. We should have a gamer party!"

Wil ignored the thud/groan combination that indicated his character had died…again, and opted to stare at his pigtailed friend, instead. "What?"

"There'd be two of you," Guy said.

"No, I think Nino plays, too. And we could invite Hector…"

"Okay, I lied. Four of you."

"Five, because Jaffar stalks Nino everywhere."

"I heard they were lovers."

"W-What kind of thing is that to say? She's so _young_!"

"Age doesn't stop everyone," Rebecca shrugged.

"Yeah, Rebecca would know." Wil gave her a smirk, and she wasted no time in springing up from her spot on the floor to grind her knuckles into the top of his head.

"What's that supposed to mean, huh?"

"M-My best friend!" he choked back, attempting to hold her at bay while Florina and Guy stared at them both.

"Your best friend was my _brother_, you psycho!"

"N-Not him!" he said back, finally grabbing her hands and holding her away at arm's length. "Raven! My other best friend!"

"Self-proclaimed best friend," she answered back. "He never really liked you that much."

"Or you, apparently."

"He did too! He just didn't want commitment."

He peered over at Florina. "She's delusional," he said, letting Rebecca go.

"Okay, so he _might_ have waited until the next morning to tell me that he didn't want anything serious, but that was a big mistake and it's not going to happen again!" She gave Wil a kick to the shin and took her seat next to Florina again. "Just don't go around telling everyone that," she said to both Florina and Guy. "It wasn't exactly a proud moment of mine, y'know?"

"We all have moments like that," Wil said reassuringly.

"Like the time you tried to go on an adventure with Dan? You packed up all your favorite things—including a cutesy little teddy bear, I remember—and made it all the way to the park in the middle of town before Dan ran back home and left you there."

"It almost ruined our friendship," Wil complained, making Florina smile. "We were going to go on epic adventures together! We were going to see the ocean, become pirates, look for treasure!"

"But he skinned his knee on the see-saw, instead."

"…Yeah, pretty much. That was enough adventure for him."

Leaning back against the wall, Florina chewed on her lower lip and grinned. She'd wanted to go on adventures as a child, too, especially after entering foster care and being shuffled around to various homes… But she'd been too scared to actually leave any of the houses she'd lived in. Her foster parents had always been nice, but…she couldn't help but want more. She had been selfish, then.

"I still want to have a party," Rebecca said.

"You can't have it here." Guy pulled the pillow away from his head and Florina noticed his unraveling braid.

"Of course not. We couldn't fit a party in here."

"A-And exams are…are soon…"

"Maybe after exams…to celebrate!"

"That actually makes sense, Wil. Also, you're still dead."

"Aww, darn."

"B-But who would host it?"

"Look, TheWench just reached level—" he looked over at Rebecca, "—Hector! He could host it! He's rich, lives in a huge house, and I heard that the weekend after exams is the weekend his brother will be out of town on business!"

"How very convenient…" Rebecca sounded so sly that Florina wondered if she'd heard her correctly.

"So it's settled, then?"

"Sure, tell Hector, though. We don't want to start a party there without his knowledge."

"…Or do we?" Guy was grinning, but dropped it immediately. "I was only teasing," he said when the others stared at him. "T-That's what Matthew would have said, I think."

"We have to invite him," Rebecca said shortly. "He's old enough to buy alcohol."

"S-So is Sain." Everyone turned to stare at her, and Florina flinched. "I-I mean, uhm…"

"We'll invite them!" Wil pumped a fist into the air enthusiastically. "Exams are the week after this one, right?"

"Yep. One week of studying left. I'll need every second." Guy sighed, and put his pillow back over his head, hiding his expression from view.

Florina had to agree. She'd have to buckle down and study hard, or else she knew she'd find herself struggling with her own exams.

"Don't worry," Wil told everyone. "Focus on studying. I'll get things worked out and when I get the details, I'll tell all of you so that you can invite other people." He looked terribly proud of himself, his chest puffed up and a grin on his face.

Florina wasn't sure if she would go or not. Social situations—especially involving alcohol—weren't exactly high on her list of things to do, but maybe if Lyn and Rebecca were there, things wouldn't be too bad. She could always leave early if she wasn't having fun…

…_**xOx…**_

Fiora was exhausted. She had always made it a point to wake up before noon, even on the weekends, but for some reason, it was one in the afternoon and she was groggily trying to force her eyes to open and stay that way.

"By the light of Saint Elimine," a voice said quietly. "I think she's finally awake."

She turned over and regarded the figure sitting at the desk on the other side of the room with lidded eyes. "I'm up."

"You stumbled in at daybreak," the redhead accused, tucking a few strands of hair behind an ear before turning back to her computer. "I was worried. You're never out that late. I had the room all to myself."

Hesitantly, Fiora looked down at her blankets, and then her roommate.

"What's that look for?" the other girl said, not even bothering to turn around. "Heath and I might have been in here, but it's not like we did anything, you know, _questionable_."

Truth be told, the still-sleepy Fiora wouldn't have doubted it if Priscilla had taken a roll in the sheets with Heath. It wasn't like they hadn't slept together before, after all. So long as it wasn't _her_ bed, and so long as _she_ didn't have to witness it or hear about it, she supposed she didn't mind.

Heath and Priscilla were both adults, and nothing she said or did would convince them that practicing making babies was not a good idea. They could get in all the practice they wanted, and if Prissy ended up pregnant, Fiora would just have to laugh—to herself, of course—while feeling sorry for the poor baby.

"Right," she finally remembered to say, though it sounded sarcastic and not at all intelligent.

"I didn't think a prude like you would ever manage to go on a date, so you really must tell me how it went." Priscilla smiled over her shoulder at her, an indication that she was joking—or perhaps only half-joking. "I can't believe you went out with Sain, though…"

"You went out with him, once." She finally managed to tumble out of her bed onto her feet. "And then you dumped him, after months of saying how you thought you were destined to be with him."

"Yes, well… He does have a way of boosting the self-esteem and the ego, you know? But I tired of it, and our personalities just didn't mesh as well as I'd hoped." She shrugged and typed out a few sentences before saving the document she was working on. "I'm done with this essay, so I hope you're ready to spill your guts."

"About what?" she asked, feigning innocence. Priscilla was a nice girl, for the most part, but it didn't make her feel any more inclined to tell her anything. She knelt down and dug through the drawers beneath her bed in an attempt to find something comfortable to wear. The day was looking like a good Lay-Around-and-Do-Nothing kind of day, and she intended to do just that…after a shower and a change of clothes, of course.

The look on her roommate's face was more than worth it. She looked a bit sour, but also amused. "Don't think that'll work on me." A grin spread across her face as Fiora moved toward the door, and she leapt out of her chair, throwing her arms out across the space of the doorframe, still smiling. "Come on," she prodded. "Tell me what kinds of shenanigans you were up to last night. Stumblin' in at daybreak, sleeping in your clothes… It's all very unlike you, Fiora! And I know Sain drives that SUV of his, so the back seat is—"

"Don't be so sick," she retorted, crossing her arms over her chest, her tote of bathroom supplies and her clothes in hand. "It was a crazy night."

"Crazy, hm? So you _did_ utilize that spacious backs—"

"I did no such thing! Now please, get out of my way. I think I have spaghetti in my _hair_."

"Whoa… now that's just _kinky_."

The palm of her free hand met her forehead in a glorious display of sound. "Look, if you let me get cleaned up, I will tell you about what happened."

Priscilla immediately moved out of the way, a triumphant smirk on her face as she nodded her approval.

"But only the barest minimal details," she continued, making her exit before her roommate could voice any complaints.

…_**xOx…**_

Saying goodbye to Lyndis wasn't as simple as Kent originally thought it would be. Every time he considered actually leaving her in that house alone, he changed his mind and decided to stay for 'a few minutes longer', which of course ended up being several hours.

He wasn't sorry that he had stayed—on the contrary, he almost felt that him falling asleep was a good thing. If he hadn't been there, he doubted that she would have taken proper care of herself. Being ill tended to make a person less likely to get out of bed for any reason, and he knew that cooking food for herself while sick would be very, very low on her list of priorities.

Chemistry equations and studying would be much higher on that list.

Unfortunately, he needed to get home. It was already early in the afternoon, and he almost dreaded walking in the front door. He could only hope that his father was still asleep, or thought that he'd woken up early to go somewhere.

He set a couple of pieces of warm toast—with butter and honey, the way she liked it—on a small plate along with some medicine, and poured a glass of juice for her before tentatively climbing the stairs that led to her room.

He'd never actually walked around the second story of Lyndis's house. Her bedroom was up there, and so was her bathroom, and he'd always felt awkward even thinking about going there—like he was invading her personal bubble, wandering about in a place he had no business being.

He still didn't feel entirely comfortable, but he had to tell her that he was leaving, and bringing her something to eat for a late lunch would give him two excuses to climb the stairs.

He found her room at the end of the hall and knocked softly on the door, getting no response. She was still asleep then, he determined, and carefully cracked the door open to peek inside. Sure enough, there was a lump under the blankets on what he assumed was her bed, and he let himself in, leaving the door open.

The plate and glass found a spot on her nightstand, and he leaned over her, hesitant to put his hand anywhere to shake her. She was completely buried under a ridiculous amount of blankets, and he couldn't make heads or tails of the shape of the lump. She had to be curled up in a ball, and he wasn't about to put his hand someplace it didn't belong.

His fingers prodded around at the front of the bed until they found the edge of some of her blankets, and he peeled them back, uncovering her head. She cringed a little at the sudden coolness against her flushed cheeks, and internally, he sighed, hating the battle that began all over again. His heart waged war against his mind, and he knew that even with her looking so sick and tired, even though he felt that she _needed _him—though perhaps that was inclusive to his own rampant hopes—his mind would win yet again.

"Lyndis," he whispered, gently patting the side of her face. His thumb rubbed lightly over her cheekbone, once, twice—and he had to pull away, worried that if he didn't, he'd be unable to stop before she woke up.

It was a few moments before she stirred, and when she opened her eyes, he was dismayed to see them looking bleary and confused. "Hi," she said softly, her accent thick with sleepiness. She closed her eyes again for a long moment as she took a deep breath, and tried opening them again. This time they were a clearer green, and her voice sounded steadier, "What's up?"

He held out the plate of food and waited patiently for her to untangle her legs from her blankets before she rose to a sitting position. "Food and medicine," he answered. "Don't forget to take more in four hours."

She nodded and took a bite of the toast before swallowing the offered pills with the juice he'd provided for her. "I need to study," she said. "I have things due tomorrow."

"You should get a little more rest, first," he suggested. "Or you'll be in no condition to make it to that early-morning class."

"I know…" She slowly ate the rest of the toast, drank most of the juice, and snuggled back under her blankets before looking up at him. "I'm so tired."

He knew it wasn't a complaint so much as it was a fact. "Go back to sleep," he urged.

"Thank you for staying." She sounded so sincere and looked so cute—even with a flu—that he felt his heart twist a little at her words. He wished that he could stay longer, especially because she appreciated it. He'd do anything to help her if he could, but…

"My pleasure," he murmured. "I have to go home, but I'll try to come back, later." He doubted that he could make it back to see her, but he did hope that the opportunity would present itself. He'd take it in an instant.

"Okay." She looked disappointed, despite her words. "Your father will be wondering where you've been. You shouldn't make him worry." Her hand patted his arm and she smiled at him. "Wake me up when you come back."

He doubted his father would worry so much as he would judge, but he didn't want the man to wonder where he had been…especially because it meant he'd draw his own conclusions; that would not be a good thing. "Of course," he said instead, and gave her a little smile in response to her own. "Just stay here and rest."

Through sheer willpower, he forced himself to leave her side, walk down the stairs, grab his things, and leave, making sure to use the spare key hidden on the front porch to lock her front door.

The drive home was short and silent. Kent's father probably wouldn't have noticed his absence if he'd only been gone for a few hours, or if he'd returned in the odd hours of the morning… But it was after one o'clock in the afternoon, and he had been gone since early Saturday morning.

He parked in the driveway, sure to leave room for his father's car to back out of the garage, and unlocked the front door before stepping into the kitchen. The first thing that greeted him was a newspaper, and a face on the other side of it.

"Where've you been?"

With everything in him, Kent wanted to lie. He'd been raised to be an honest person. His mother had definitely succeeded in that endeavor, and it helped that his father had been a former member of the Air Force before becoming a police officer. Military training on top of officer training had turned Isaac Morgan into the straight-up kind of man Kent had, once upon a time, wanted to be like.

He found that he couldn't lie. "Out…" he managed to say, looking around the kitchen. Everything was neat and tidy.

"With a girl, I'll bet," his father said, neatly folding the newspaper before laying it on the table in front of him. "You know they're trouble. They cry to try and get out of traffic tickets, and they get pregnant to guilt-trip you into marrying them." He took a sip from a can of beer in front of him, and Kent wondered how many he had already had that morning—or if he'd ever gone to sleep the night before.

Judging by how clean the house seemed to be, and the circles beneath his father's green eyes, he hadn't slept at all.

"You don't mean that," he said quietly. He _knew_ the man didn't mean that.

"Don't you dare call me a liar, especially while you beat around the bush with your answer." He stared at him for a moment before standing up and walking over to his son, pointing a finger straight into the center of his chest. "I don't answer to you. _You_ answer to me. As long as you live in my house, you live by my rules."

"Understood," he answered evenly. He expected nothing less.

The older man's finger pushed against him, and he did his best to look his father in the eyes. Isaac wasn't exactly furious, but he was angry, and Kent supposed he had every right to be. After all, his only son had disappeared for more than twenty-four hours without any explanation.

He couldn't tell him that he had been with Lyn—he just _couldn't_.

"Now answer me. Where have you been?"

"Out…" Ah, that was weak, and he knew it. He flinched more at his own terrible answer than the hard shove his father gave him for saying it. "I was out with friends," he finally corrected himself.

"Friends, or _a_ friend?"

He was back against a wall, in every sense of the word. "A friend," he answered, defeated. "One…friend."

"I thought as much. A male friend, or a female _friend_, Kent?" His father meant business, and he knew it. The man wasn't a police officer without reason, after all. He knew how to get answers out of people.

Kent just couldn't lie, even—or perhaps _especially_—about Lyn. "Female," he said after a moment, unable to meet his father's gaze any longer.

"My God, Kent!" Isaac exclaimed, throwing his arms into the air and pacing back to the table to down the rest of his beer before he tossed the can at the trash—and missed, the can clattering across the floor before it landed under the lip of a countertop. "Can't you just keep it in your pants? I can't—" He paused to shake his head, as if he could hardly believe what he was imagining. "I can't believe that I've let you turn into…into _this._ I thought I raised you better…"

"B-But I didn't—"

"I don't want your excuses. I don't—I'm so disappointed! I can't believe that you'd…" He trailed off and shook his head again.

"I only stayed there, we didn't do anything!" He sounded defensive, and maybe he was, but he needed to be. How could his father have come to the conclusion that he had actually _slept_ with Lyndis? He loved her, but he would—would _never_…

He didn't know.

He couldn't say that he would never sleep with her, or that he didn't want to, because he would be lying to himself. But they weren't even in a relationship, let alone a committed one—one headed for marriage! "We just watched a movie," he finished weakly, a last-ditch effort to clear the image of him that his father had in his head.

"Right." The man said, holding a hand up that denoted silence. It was clear that he didn't believe him, and Kent shut his mouth and let his father leave the room. He heard the television turn on in the family room, and he sighed to himself, taking a seat at the small table in the kitchen where Isaac had been sitting only a few minutes before.

He didn't understand why his father just didn't trust him. He'd never given him a reason to _distrust_ him, had never lied or stolen or cheated. He had always followed every rule without question, and he'd always done everything he was asked to do.

Nothing had been the same since his mother had died. Ellen was an amazing woman, but when she'd passed away, it was as if…she'd taken a part of her husband with her to the grave.

Maybe his heart.

Kent let his head fall into his palms, and he rubbed at his temples, sighing every now and again as his thoughts twisted in his head. He couldn't go back to Lyndis, or his father might simply kick him out. He couldn't afford to be on his own, and he hated that fact, but it was the life of a college student, and he accepted it—again, without question.

He wished his father were more understanding, not just of him, but also of people in general. He had loved Ellen, and he still loved Kent, but sometimes it was hard to find the affection hidden beneath all of the hurt and the anger.

He wanted to tell his father all of the things he loved about Lyndis, loved and _respected_, because he respected her enough to wait until he thought they were both ready to be in a relationship before telling her how he felt, and he didn't expect that day to be terribly close.

The night before had been interesting, and fun in its own way. For a moment, he'd wondered…if they _were_ in a relationship—a _committed one_—would be anything like that? Cooking for and with her, fixing things in the house, sitting together on the couch, falling asleep in each other's arms… It would be nice, he thought, but at the same time, his own thoughts frightened him.

It would hurt if she didn't feel the same way about him. He knew she cared for him, knew she even _loved_ him, but he had no way of knowing or understanding _how much_ she loved him.

They had a strong friendship; she was the only woman he'd ever been close to in his life—with the exception of his own mother—and he'd rather die than lose the comfortable silences and her constant presence.

Before Ellen's death, Isaac might have been able to understand why Kent loved Lyndis. Ellen might have laughed and tousled her husband's hair with a smart-assed, _"Well, why wouldn't he love her?" _kind of a remark, had she lived. But Isaac couldn't understand now. If he saw Lyn, he'd see a young woman. He'd see a young woman that his son had supposedly slept with, one that had probably tricked him into sleeping with her, one that…wasn't from Caelin. He'd see a foreigner that his son was taken with, and he'd hate her.

He'd hate the fact that Lyn was doing to Kent what Ellen had done to him—what…he now tried to convince himself Ellen had done.

He had never wanted his father to see Lyndis, let alone meet her. He was afraid of what would happen, afraid that his father would hate her, that he would hurt her in some way.

He got to his feet and made his way to the living room to see his father fast asleep in the reclining chair that sat in front of the television. A blanket was folded on the arm of the couch against the far wall, and he shook it out before draping it over the man, noticing the way his red hair had grey in it, now.

The tears on his face were still wet, and Kent found himself looking up and over, at the television screen. The volume was down so low he could hardly hear it, but he knew what it was he was seeing.

It was a home movie, Isaac had shot it, and Ellen was smiling at the camera and waving at him as he followed her up and down the beach where they'd had their second honeymoon.

Kent looked away almost immediately. He… It had been years, but he wasn't ready to face those tapes. Perhaps his father wasn't ready, either, but he put himself through watching them over and over again.

Maybe—just maybe—Kent thought as he made his way to where the remote laid on the coffee table, his mother had left a small piece of his father's heart behind for him.

The tears on his father's face were slowly drying, and Kent paused with his fingers on the remote, deciding after a moment to leave the television on so that his father could wake up to see Ellen's face.

…_**xOx…**_

To say that she was frustrated would be an understatement. Farina might have actually been on the verge of tears if she thought it would help her situation. Of course, crying never helped anyone—except maybe that time Serra had cried to get out of a traffic ticket—so Farina fell against her seat and counted backward from ten while she breathed deeply.

Once she had calmed herself—as much as possible—she put her car in neutral and got out. Old Faithful was sitting right in the middle of the road, after all, and seeing as how its hazard lights didn't work anymore, she had to get it off of the road.

Half an hour later, her car was resting on the side of the road, and she herself was freezing. She berated herself for not getting dressed before leaving, but it was too late to change things, now, so she settled down in her car and tried to decide what to do. She curled up behind the steering wheel, her chin resting on her knees.

She could call someone, she thought, but a quick glance at her phone told her that her signal strength didn't even exist, so she ruled it out immediately. She didn't know a damned thing about cars, or what made them tick, so she ruled out popping the hood. The catch didn't release properly, anyway, and she wouldn't know what was wrong even if she could look. Maybe Old Faithful needed oil, or wiper fluid, or the transmission was bad, or maybe it just needed new spark plugs. It didn't help that she didn't know how any of those things actually contributed to the function of her vehicle.

Really, she could only hope that someone drove by who could either help, or who had a cell phone that actually got a signal.

An hour passed by before someone actually drove by, but they didn't bother to stop, probably thinking her car to be abandoned. She pulled her jacket around her a little closer and sighed. She'd wait to see if someone stopped, but…if nobody did, she'd have to start walking.

Almost another hour went by, and someone finally did stop. "Need some help?" a male voice called out, and a moment later, a middle-aged man stood at her window. She cringed, deep down inside at the sight of him; there was just something uncomfortably creepy about a stranger at the window of your car. "I don't know if I can help, but I'll certainly try."

She nodded and fiddled with her door to open it as she pushed the hood release button inside her car. "It just died on me in the middle of the road," she said smartly. "I know it's a piece of junk, but Old Faithful's never failed me, before."

"Old Faithful, huh?" he said, smiling a bit as her fingers sought the catch under her hood to release it. If she didn't pull and push on it just right, it wouldn't open. "So the car has a name…"

"Yeah, sort of. When it kept running every time I thought it was dead, I decided that it deserved the name."

"It's okay, my Sunfire has a name, too." Finally, the hood opened, and he propped it up as she stepped back to allow him to look inside.

_Everything looks the same_, she thought as she stared at all the plastic boxes and hoses and wires. "What is the name of your car?" she asked him, looking back at the bright red vehicle parked behind her with its hazard lights flashing.

He looked up and grinned. "Phoenix," he answered. "I'm hardly creative."

"It's not a bad name," she said, and lapsed into silence. He was being terribly nice by offering to help her out, but it was still really…weird. Why would anyone…help someone they didn't even know? Without an ulterior motive, she couldn't really figure out the reasoning behind such supposed kindness.

Finally, he stood, straightening his back, and unhooked the rod that help the hood up, letting it fall back into place before turning to her. He cringed, "You need new spark plugs, I think your transmission might be shot, you probably should have put oil in this a month ago, but…none of those are the actual root of the problem."

"So, what is it then, Doc?" she asked in her usual prompt, snappy fashion.

"My best guess is the timing belt. Either way, for what it would cost to fix this, I'll bet you could just buy a another car."

She sighed and shook her head. "Just my luck," she grumbled. "But thanks for stopping and helping." She was almost itching for him to just leave, if only because she couldn't figure out why he'd bother to stop and help her for no real reason at all. There had to be a reason, and she wasn't sure she wanted to give him enough time to prove to her what that reason was.

"Do you need me to call someone for you?" he asked. "My phone doesn't get a signal right here—it's kind of a dead zone—but when I get further down the road, I could stop and call someone to come and get you."

She could just imagine Serra's facial expression, getting a call from a strange man. She'd never believe him, let alone drive out to the middle of nowhere to get her. She'd be more likely to call the cops.

"I already called someone," she lied. "They should be here any moment." She wasn't about to say that even if someone _was_ on their way, it'd take them three hours to get to her, or that she had no way of calling someone because her phone couldn't get a signal. For all he knew, though, she didn't have the same service company and she did get a signal.

"Well, that's good. I hope they get here soon." Then, after a pause, "By the way, I'm Jan. I'd shake your hand, but I have grease all over me."

"I'm…sorry about that," she found herself apologizing. "I have a rag in the trunk, hold on…" Only because he'd dirtied himself helping her, she popped the trunk and sorted around through it before coming up with an ugly white rag that she kept just in case she needed it—along with about a million other odds and ends. She handed it to him and he wiped the grease from his hands.

"Is there anything I can do?" he asked.

"I'll be fine," she answered. "Thank you for stopping."

"It was no problem." He flashed a smile at her and handed the rag back to her. "Good luck with everything."

She nodded at him in thanks, and within a minute, he was out of sight. She sighed in relief, reminding herself to never let a car break down again… It was just too much stress on her nerves; she wasn't sure how to deal with it properly.

She got back into her car and waited for a few moments, mostly in an effort to warm up. The weather wasn't as cold as it had been lately, but she could feel the wind through her pajama bottoms, and she hated it.

After managing to get the feeling back into her legs, she grabbed her phone and left her car where it was. Years of being in high school track and field had helped her stamina as far as walking was concerned, and she soon found herself jogging down the side of the road—moving off into the trees every time a car passed her—in the search of a signal. She walked for well over an hour before she finally managed to get a bar on her stupid phone, and she wasted no time in calling Serra.

…_**xOx…**_

Sain sat on the edge of his bed shoveling food down his throat. Somehow Lucius had managed to lure him out from the land of the dust bunnies and cobwebs—probably with the smell of said food—and had insisted that he get cleaned up and put clothes on that weren't stained and wrinkly before he allowed him the luxury of eating.

The elementary education major found that if he hurried, he could get a shower and put clean clothes on in less than a half-hour…if he didn't spent time looking in the mirror to make sure his hair looked good, which it always did anyway.

"So…" Lucius started, leaning back in his computer chair. "Spaghetti?"

Sain's expression fell. "Well, you see…" he said, polishing off the rest of the ham sandwich in front of him before clearing his fingers of the evidence that food had ever been in his possession, "I took the lovely Miss Owens out to dinner at a nice Italian place…"

"That's good, and I'm assuming that is where the spaghetti comes in…"

"Gee, however did you guess?" He stared at his roommate with wide, curious eyes before doing away with that expression and replacing it with one of mixed emotions. "I think she was starting to warm up to me a little, I mean…more than usual. I tried not to go overboard on the compliments, even though she _did _look stunning in that little black dress." He shrugged and stared at the ceiling. "But then we got our food."

"Spaghetti, right?"

"Right. Except that we didn't order spaghetti."

"…What?"

"Yeah, we ordered some chicken pasta deal, but we got spaghetti. We were going to flag someone down to tell them what was wrong, but it looked good, and we'd already waited long enough to eat, so we decided to just go ahead and eat it…and casually mention it later, since it wasn't really a big deal. Well, we didn't think it was at the time."

"But it was a big deal?"

Sain could tell that his blond friend was trying to figure out how in the world spaghetti could be a big deal, and he laughed, sounding embarrassed. "I paid my usual compliments to Miss Owens, of course, and she has the cutest way of eating…"

Lucius rolled his eyes, but Sain completely ignored it, continuing his story.

"Then, as I was telling her how nice her hair looked, she just _stared at me_. It was…" he shuddered. "It was scary, Lucius! It was this blank look that turned helpless and scared. It took me a few minutes to realize that she was actually _choking _on something!"

That got Lucius's attention, and he leaned forward, flipping his low ponytail behind him as he did so. "She _choked_?"

"W-Well, I know CPR, but I was so delayed in figuring out what was going on that Sir Wallace—"

"_He_ was there?!"

"—Ended up doing the Heimlich, and she coughed up a _ring_—"

"A _what_?!"

"An engagement ring!" Sain said, arms flying outward. "A ring! On her plate!"

"I didn't know that you were going to propose!"

"I wasn't! I mean, I didn't! It wasn't me!"

"Then…" Lucius's expression turned serious. "You didn't order spaghetti, but you got it. Then she choked on an engagement ring that you didn't give her."

"Right."

"So it… That order was meant for someone else?"

"You're so smart. I knew there was a reason I kept you around." Sain's smile turned devious before he tousled his own hair and shook his head. "Fiora was _furious_, though, thinking I had tried to propose on the _first date_, and with a ring in her food that _choked her_, no less!"

"You are a magnet for trouble."

"No lie! I tried to tell her that the engagement ring ninjas must have planted it there in an effort to get their revenge on me for that time I jokingly proposed to Serra with a Cracker Jack ring and she tried to murder me with a pencil, but it just made her _angrier_, and she finally just threw her food at me, ring and all."

Lucius sighed. "Sain, if you didn't exaggerate everything…"

"I didn't say it in those words, exactly," he insisted. "Either way, then Professor Sol stormed over—"

"She was there, too?!"

"If I'm mentioning her, then she apparently was, but it threw us for a loop, too. So there I was, noodles on my shirt, Miss Owens ready to kill me, and I realized that she was there with Sir Wallace!"

Sputtering, the blond man tried to get his senses to…make sense. "They were on a _date_?!"

"And not the first one, either, because that ring was for Professor Sol!"

"From Sir Wallace?"

"Yes! Of course, getting hit with a plate of spaghetti was worth it, but then we had to find the ring, which required crawling around on the floor… It took almost an hour to find it, then Sir Wallace proposed to Professor Sol—it was very creepy, by the way, and he actually called her by her real name, which I will not reveal!—and Miss Owens helped clean me up. If anything, that made it all worth it."

"So…Fiora got a ring intended for Professor Sol…and then Fiora tried to kill you with a plate of spaghetti, there was a proposal after the ring was relocated, and…"

"And Fiora helped clean me up while we talked for hours and hours. Oh, and she agreed to go on a second date, but we're not going to have spaghetti ever again."

"That's probably for the best."

"Talking for hours and hours, agreeing on a second date, or never eating spaghetti again? Because I happen to like eating spa—"

"Never mind." He sighed and leaned back in his chair again. "By talking for hours, do you mean _you_ talked for hours and she listened?"

He was teasing, but Sain smirked. "She talked," he answered. "But I'll never tell what we talked about."

"Rainbows and ponies?" he guessed.

"Well, even though those things can be pretty deep, that isn't what we talked about. We talked about soul-searchingly deep, intelligent stuff."

"So in other words, she said a few sentences, and you're overly excited about it, thinking it means you're really close now that she's 'confided' in you?"

"…Maybe."

…_**xOx…**_

Sleeping was something that Lyndis loved, but she didn't wake up until it was already dark outside—or close to being dark. Even by her own standards, that was ridiculous. She hurried to take more medication—what Kent had given her had stopped working, unfortunately, letting her fever return full-force.

She felt terrible, but her first thought was of Kent. She combed the house and still couldn't find a trace of him. She was disappointed, but more than that, she was concerned. He'd said he'd be back, hadn't he? Her muddled mind was hardly thinking straight right after waking up, so she _could_ have heard him wrong, but she definitely thought he'd said he'd return later.

It was later, so where was he?

She took a quick shower and braided her wet hair neatly behind her head before getting dressed.

She tried studying for a little while, but found it hard to concentrate with a fever, a sore throat, and the occasional cough, not to mention the headache, fatigue, and the general weakness she felt in her limbs. The biggest problem, though, was Kent, and the fact that he was not there when he said he would be.

He never lied about anything—something she could appreciate—and it worried her that he wasn't around. Maybe something had happened to him—or his father—and he had been detained. He could have fallen asleep, too, she reasoned. So she was being silly for thinking about actually seeking him out.

A few minutes passed, and she resisted the urge to send him a text message. He didn't have texting on his cell phone plan, and it would only cost him money.

She'd hate to wake him if he was asleep, but finally, she did give his cell phone a ring. It was turned off. Her first notion was that he was angry with her, but she dismissed it after giving it less than a second's thought. He couldn't possibly be mad at her—she hadn't done anything wrong, and neither had he.

Curiosity eventually started to get the better of her, and she made a piece of toast for herself, thinking of him the entire time. He had been nice enough to spend most of his day with her—something the average person wouldn't have done. She wondered why he'd done it, but they were good friends, so it wasn't all that unusual…was it? Maybe it was. He'd even brought her food and medicine and juice…juice that she didn't even remember having in her refrigerator.

She coughed into a fist and stared blankly at the clock on the wall. _7:36_ peered back at her, and she glared at it. It was starting to get late—not nearly as late as she'd stayed up the night before, of course, but late considering she had to get up early for class and she still had studying and work to finish before she went to bed. She wondered half-heartedly if she'd ever be able to stay up late enough to finish everything.

If she didn't find Kent and establish his well-being, though, she doubted she'd be able to even concentrate on sleep—and she was still so tired.

Slowly, she got up from the kitchen table and pulled on her coat, zipping it up all the way. Kent only lived a few minutes away, but she was sick and it was cold outside, so she wasn't taking any chances. As an afterthought, she wrapped a scarf around her neck—a Christmas gift from Florina—and grabbed her keys, making certain to lock the door after stepping out onto the porch. The fact that Kent had remembered to lock it for her didn't escape her notice at all, and she smiled at the little gesture, wondering if he realized how much she appreciated it.

She'd never been inside his house, and it did bother her to some degree. It was probably messy or something, she'd always reasoned to herself. She knew his father liked alcohol, and there was a good chance that the man had a penchant for trashing the house while Kent was gone. It had made perfect sense to her, and still seemed to, but messy houses wouldn't bother her too much. She kept hers neat and tidy, but it certainly wasn't perfect. A messy house wouldn't reflect badly on Kent, either way, because she already knew him and liked him exactly how he was.

The steps to the front porch were steep, but there were only a few of them, and she paid strict attention to them lest she slip. The doorbell button was right in front of her, and she bit her lip and shivered a little from the chilly evening air before she pressed the button.

Nobody came right away, but Kent's truck was still in the driveway, so she was almost certain he was home—he never seemed to go anywhere with his father, after all. She pressed the button again, and waited patiently.

Footsteps could be heard through the door, and after a moment, it opened, the screen door following after. She found herself face-to-face with a man that had to be Kent's father. He was tall, slim, and his hair was red, though it seemed to be graying at the temples. He looked like he couldn't even be forty years old, and his eyes were green.

"Hello, Mr. Morgan," she said, her voice cracking. She smiled at him to try and cover that up. "Is Kent home?"

He leaned against the doorframe and finished off the can in his hand. She couldn't read the label, but it had to be alcohol of some kind… She could smell the liquor on his breath, even from where she stood.

"Back to seduce him again?" he said dryly, sounding nothing less than annoyed. "I can't believe he would fall for… Wait right there."

His words confused her, but they were most likely the ramblings of a drunk man, and nothing more. It was a little odd, she thought, that he didn't even invite her into the house, considering it was cold outside and she was a friend of his son. She stamped her feet to try and get some feeling back into her legs while she waited for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, Kent appeared, looking less than pleased.

His own hair was dark from a recent shower, and he stepped out of the house and joined her on the porch in a long-sleeved shirt and a pair of jeans. He didn't even have any shoes on.

She was too busy wondering why he hadn't invited her into the house to get out of the weather to realize that he looked more and more upset with every passing moment. "What are you doing here?" he finally asked shortly, as if he was holding back from actually full-out snapping at her.

She felt hurt, but rationalized his behavior with the thought that maybe she had woken him up. "I came to see you."

"I didn't invite you."

She blinked and took half a step back on the small porch. "But…"

"Why are you here?"

She looked down, feeling nothing short of unwanted. "I just… You didn't come back, so…"

"I said that I would _try_ to come back, not that I would."

Kent was never big on words, had never been good with them. She was used to hearing his short sentences, used to him getting straight to the point without beating around the bush. "I'm…sorry."

"I told you to stay at home."

"I know, but—"

"I don't want you here. I _never_ wanted you here."

She wasn't used to being hurt by his words, by those short sentences and his straight-to-the-point approach. She took a step toward him, but didn't know what to do when she found herself closer. After a moment, she reached out for him, her fingertips grazing the sleeve of his shirt. "Kent…" She hadn't meant to upset him, and she wasn't sure why he was upset with her, nor was she sure what exactly it was she had done—how exactly she had managed to offend him by showing up at his house.

He didn't give her a chance to ask, and he didn't offer any explanations. "Just leave me alone, Lyn," he said, taking her arms in his hands; in one fluid motion, he turned her around and pushed her forward. He was back inside of his house almost before she tripped down the porch steps and landed face-first in his yard; all she could think about was that he had called her _Lyn_, not _Lyndis_, and he'd never done that before.

He didn't even check to make sure that she was okay.

…_**xOx…**_

Hector was confused. It was late in the evening, and he was driving in unfamiliar territory.

TheWench, a glorious level ten, wasn't going to level up anytime soon—which disappointed him, because Wil had introduced him to the Ding System, which pretty much annoyed the hell out of Rebecca…something that was almost as fun as annoying the hell out of Farina.

Basically, he got to shout out _Ding!_ Every time he leveled up. Which, at low levels, happened quite often, and was apparently quite aggravating.

But Farina needed his help, so he was more than willing to offer it, especially because it meant she'd be indebted to him forever. He knew that pile of junk she drove would die on her sooner or later, and his day of glory and being generally awesome was finally at hand…

A part of him felt bad, though. She was _three hours away_ from the campus—it was a good thing she was only two hours away from him—and for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why someone like her would be that far away from college on a Sunday… According to Wil, she was headed to Pherae, not heading back from Pherae… It was all very…odd, to say the least.

He leaned back and settled into the seat of his S2000. It would be a long night.

Finally, after a lot of driving and a stop to fill up the gas tank, his headlights flashed off of the taillights of a…heap of junk. He knew it was Farina's car—there was no mistake about it. He could probably pick her junker out of a junkyard of junkers.

It would, of course, be the ugliest one.

He pulled up behind her car, and flipped on his hazard lights before getting out. He left his engine running. If anything, he didn't plan on staying there long. With a three-hour drive back to campus, it'd be late before they got back. It was a good thing Hector had a GPS system, or the three-hour drive would probably end up being closer to six hours long.

He sauntered up to the driver's side window of Farina's car, and was ready to start boasting about how great he was for coming to her rescue, when…he noticed she wasn't even sitting there.

A moment of panic overtook him, especially when he found that he could open her door with relative ease. A young woman—sure, it was Farina, but _still_—out in the middle of nowhere… Even he was worried.

But then he noticed her sprawled out fast asleep in the back seat amid a pile of jackets, and he found himself softening a little bit. He opened the backseat and knelt down to get a better look at her. It was dark, and his headlights helped him see, though not as well as he'd have liked. Her cheeks were red—from the cold, no doubt—and she looked strangely…

He hesitated to say _vulnerable_, but she did look terribly small and…and almost…kind of cute. Just a little, though.

A tiny, itsy bitsy little bit.

He hardly realized his hand was smoothing back her hair until her eyelashes fluttered, and large, blue eyes were blinking at him confusedly.

"Hey," he said softly. "Don't you know better than to forget to lock your doors? What if someone had tried something?"

"They don't…lock," she said, sitting up after a moment, hand going to her head. "Did you just…?"

"Just what?" He shrugged and stood back up. "You should be bowing at my feet right now. For coming to get you, I mean."

"You, of all people. Where's Florina?"

"Huh?"

"I called Serra, but she couldn't come, and she said she'd call Florina…"

"She doesn't even own a car, right? So what good would that do?"

"But she knows _Lyn_—"

"Who doesn't own a car either—"

"Who knows _Kent_, who is a prude, but _owns a truck_."

"Wow, so there were a lot of people who weren't willing to help you out, tonight. Must suck bein' you."

"Shut up, Hector. I'm not in the mood for your petty insults."

"What about your own?"

She didn't answer, choosing instead to study the tips of her fingernails, which he knew she couldn't even see.

He sighed, not really in the mood for arguing, himself. Not after driving for two hours, anyway. "C'mon. Let's go."

She looked behind her. "Can I put my junk in your trunk?"

He blinked. "Seems to me like you've got enough junk in your _own_ trunk," he said. "And I mean that in every sense."

"I didn't mean I'd take it all, just the important stuff." Then, after a moment, "And what are you doing, looking at my ass, Hector von Ostia?"

"Don't call me that!"

"You're not denying that you were looking at my butt?"

"I didn't say it looked good!"

"But you looked at it!" She got to her feet and wobbled a bit before getting her balance. She popped the trunk and leaned over it to rummage through the contents.

"Well…maybe I'm looking at it right now!"

"You can't look at my butt from in front of me, stupid."

He walked around to the back of the car. "Maybe _now_ I'm looking at it!"

"You can look, but you sure as hell ain't touchin'."

"Pfff, like I'd _want_—" His half-lie—because he half wanted to, but he half-didn't because she'd proceed to kill him if he tried—was interrupted by her shoving a couple of ratty old blankets, small boxes, and other assorted seemingly random things at him. "What is this crap?" he asked, stalking off to dump it in the trunk of his beautiful sports car.

"My life," she said simply, taking out a few books before closing the lid and fondly patting the top of the trunk. "Goodbye, Old Faithful," she whispered.

It kind of creeped him out. "You feelin' all right?"

"I'm freezing half to death, but I'm otherwise fine…why?"

"You talked to your car."

"Sure. What's wrong with that?"

"It's wei—wait, are you going to abandon it?"

"I'll call someone in the morning to tow it to a junkyard," she said, sounding as if she'd resigned herself to the poor vehicle's fate.

"But…"

Gently, she opened the door to his S2000 and took a seat just as Hector closed the lid to his own trunk. "You were right—Old Faithful _is_ a piece of junk."

"Look, I didn't mean—"

"No, no… I've been thinking. I've been sitting here half the day, you know." She let her elbow sit on the armrest and she stared out of the window as he took his place beside her and fastened his seatbelt, nudging her to do the same. She complied before returning to her former position. "You have a lot of money, so maybe you don't understand. Us poor people don't get to choose how our cars look, okay? When someone gives us something for practically nothing, we take it and we're grateful."

"Sure, sure," he said. "But can't you fix the old thing up?"

"I don't have that kind of money."

He surprised even himself with his response, "I do."

* * *

…_**xOx…**_

**Author Notes:**

Regarding _World of Warcraft_, the game referenced and played by several _Fire Emblem_ cast members, the way Wil and Rebecca ramble on about it is reminiscent of how my brother used to ramble to me about it, before I had any idea what it was he was talking about. Murlocs are scary, and if you do a search on YouTube, you should be able to find and hear the disturbing sound(s) they make. (And when several gang up on you, it's even more disturbing.)

Kent's father is just bitter, give him time. Also, he likes cleaning when he's drunk. I used to work with a guy who did that.

Farina's car is interesting. One thing to render it completely useless would be a cracked engine block, but there's a particular make out there, and if you don't change their timing belts around 100k miles, eventually it'll basically ruin your car. (Since the junker must remain a mystery, I can't tell which make.) Also, Jan is Nino's uncle.

Sain and Fiora's date, and Kent and Lyn's fight were nothing like expected, I hope.

Farina and Hector…how do you think that will turn out?

Thank you for reading! Feedback would be very much appreciated!


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